A  STUDY  OF 

•ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN 

POETS  ' 

A  LABORATORY  METHOD 


BY 

J.  SCOTT   CLARK,  LlTT.D. 

AUTHOR    OF    "A    PRACTICAL    RHETORIC,"     "A    STUDY    OF    ENGLISH    PROSE 

WRITERS,"    ETC.,   AND   PROFESSOR  OF  THE  ENGLISH   LANGUAGE 

AT   NORTHWESTERN    UNIVERSITY 


"  Le  Style  c'est  I'homme." — BUFFON 

"  The  whole  art  of  criticism  consists  in  learning  to 
know  the  human  being  who  is  partially  revealed  to  us 
in  his  written  and  spoken  words."— LESLIE  STEPHEN 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1900 


COPYRIGHT,  1900,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


TROW  DIRECTORY 

PRINTING  AND   BOOKBINDING   COMPANY 
NEW   YORK 


TO 

MY  PUPILS 

AT  NORTHWESTERN    UNIVERSITY 
WITH   APPRECIATION 

OF  THEIR 
A  PPRE  CIA  TION 


IS* 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

GEOFFREY  CHAUCER      .        .         .         .        .        .         .  i 

EDMUND  SPENSER          .......  38 

JOHN  MILTON 89 

JOHN  DRYDEJ*        ........  131 

ALEXANDER  POPE  ........  163 

ROBERT  BURNS .        .  208 

WILLIAM  COWPER 252 

JOHN  KEATS 289 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY         .         .         .        .        .        .  328 

GEORGE  GORDON,  LORD  BYRON 372 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 411 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH 452 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 497 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT     .         .        .        .'       .        .530 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 574 

HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW        ....  616 

ROBERT  BROWNING 658 


VI  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 

PAGE 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 714 

^/ALFRED  TENNYSON         .        .        .        .         .        .         -755 

^ —  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES    ......     805 

INDEX .     847 


PREFACE 


THE  kindly  reception  accorded  to  the  author's  "Study  of 
English  Prose  Writers,"  published  in  1898,  seems  to  warrant 
the  appearance  of  this  complementary  volume,  which  was 
foreshadowed  in  the  preface  to  the  "  Prose  Writers."  As  the 
method  involved  is  somewhat  distinctive,  it  seems  wise  to 
make  some  repetitions  from  that  preface.  A  certain  amount 
of  repetition  will  be  found,  also,  in  the  chapters  on  Milton, 
Lowell,  and  Holmes. 

It  is  generally  admitted  by  teachers  of  English  that,  after 
one  has  learned  to  avoid  the  common  violations  of  clearness, 
force,  precision,  and  the  other  requisites  of  good  style,  he  may 
best  improve  his  own  use  of  the  mother- tongue  by  studying 
the  English  classics.  But  how  is  one  to  study  the  English 
classics  so  as  to  obtain  positive  and  appreciable  results  ?  This 
volume  represents  an  attempt  to  answer  that  question  so  far  as 
it  applies  to  the  poets  concerned.  Certainly,  the  question  has 
not  been  answered  satisfactorily  by  the  numerous  text-books 
on  English  literature,  nor  by  the  countless  editions  of  English 
classics  ' '  with  notes. ' '  To  memorize  biographical  data  or  the 
generalities  and  negations  of  criticism,  or  to  trace  out  obscure 
allusions  or  doubtful  meanings,  is  certainly  not  to  study  a 
writer  in  any  broad  or  fruitful  way.  While  the  method  here 
offered  may  not  be  ideal,  it  is  not  merely  theoretical.  It  has 
been  rigidly  and  continuously  tested  in  the  author's  class-room 
during  the  last  twelve  years  by  means  of  a  partially  developed 
manuscript,  printed  privately  for  the  use  of  his  own  pupils, 
and  again  in  his  published  volume  on  the  "  Prose  Writers." 

In  a  word,  the  method  consists  in  determining  the  particu- 


Vlll  PREFACE 

lar  and  distinctive  features  of  a  writer's  style  (using  the  term 
style  in  its  widest  sense),  in  sustaining  this  analysis  by  a  very 
wide  consensus  of  critical  opinion,  in  illustrating  the  particu- 
lar characteristics  of  each  writer  by  carefully  selected  extracts 
from  his  works,  and  in  then  requiring  the  pupil  to  find,  in  the 
works  of  the  writer,  parallel  illustrations. 

The  method  grew  out  of  dissatisfaction  with  results  ob- 
tained under  the  old  ways  of  teaching  English  and  out  of  the 
conviction  that  such  a  revolution  as  has  taken  place  in  the 
manner  of  studying  all  branches  of  natural  science  during  the 
last  quarter-century  is  both  possible  and  desirable  in  the  study 
of  English.  Just  as  the  pupil  has  learned  to  study  oxygen  and 
electricity  and  protoplasm,  and  not  merely  what  someone  has 
written  about  these,  so  he  must  learn  to  study  the  masterpieces 
of  style  themselves  and  not  merely  what  someone  has  written 
about  them.  Moreover,  as  the  student  of  chemistry,  phys- 
ics, or  biology  must  have  a  hand-book  or  a  set  of  tables  to 
show  him  how  to  go  to  work,  so  the  student  of  English  clas- 
sics must  have  a  hand-book  to  show  him  how  to  go  to  work. 
This  volume  is  offered  as  such  a  hand-book  for  the  poets  of 
generally  accepted  rank  except  Shakespeare. 

It  is  a  plausible  objection  to  the  method  here  presented 
that  it  is  unscientific  because  it  seems  to  apply  the  old  scho- 
lastic dictum,  "  First  learn  what  is  to  be  believed,"  and  be- 
cause it  follows  a  deductive  rather  than  an  inductive  order. 
The  reply  is  that  the  pupil  must  have  some  guidance,  and 
that  "every  one  knows  more  than  any  one."  It  is  believed 
that  the  consensus  of  criticism  here  offered  is  sufficiently  wide 
to  annul  any  charge  of  mere  individual  preference.  To  ask 
an  ordinary  undergraduate  to  study  an  English  classic  without 
giving  him  some  specific  directions,  is  as  fruitless  as  to  ask  him 
to  fly.  Moreover,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  method  here  offered 
is  really  inductive  and  scientific  ;  for  the  pupil  is  encouraged 
to  discover,  in  any  writer  under  consideration,  any  other  dis- 
tinctive characteristic  for  which  he  can  find  clear  illustrations 


PREFACE  IX 

besides  those  named  in  the  analysis  found  in  this  book.  After 
a  class  has  had  sufficient  experience  in  following  the  method 
here  presented,  it  may  be  wise  and  feasible  to  ask  them  to  do 
independent  critical  work;  but  born  critics  are  as  rare  as  born 
chemists. 

Among  the  results  obtained  from  this  method  are  an  in- 
crease in  the  breadth,  accuracy,  and  idiomatic  character  of  the 
pupil's  vocabulary;  the  development,  in  his  style,  of  such 
graces  as  chaste  imagery,  suspense,  point,  smoothness,  rhythm, 
and  a  greater  predominance  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  element ;  the 
development  of  an  intelligent  critical  habit ;  and  last,  but  per- 
haps most  important,  the  creation  of  a  real  hunger  for  the 
best  literature  and  the  initiation  of  the  pupil  into  the  real  life 
and  spirit  of  the  great  masters  of  style.  The  central  idea  of 
this  volume  is  found  in  the  quotation  from  Leslie  Stephen 
given  on  the  title-page  :  "  The  whole  art  of  criticism  consists 
in  learning  to  know  the  human  being  who  is  partially  revealed 
to  us  in  his  written  and  spoken  words." 

The  biographical  outline  prefixed  to  the  discussion  of  each 
writer  is  intended  simply  as  a  means  of  review,  that  the  reader 
may  get  his  historical  bearings,  so  to  speak,  before  beginning 
his  critical  work.  Those  who  desire  more  minute  biogra- 
phies will  find  them  in  the  encyclopaedias  and  those  best  of 
all  biographies,  the  published  letters  of  the  writers  concerned. 
The  biographies  of  the  earlier  writers  here  discussed  are  based 
on  Leslie  Stephen's  invaluable  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy ;  ' '  the  later  ones  are  based  on  a  careful  review  of  each 
writer's  correspondence.  The  bibliographies  also  prefixed  to 
the  several  discussions  are  the  result  of  some  research.  No 
subject  needs  the  services  of  the  professional  bibliographer 
more  than  criticism,  yet  hitherto  it  has  been  strangely  and 
almost  entirely  neglected.  In  the  nature  of  the  case,  the  best 
criticism  is  not  to  be  found  in  complete  volumes  nor  even  in 
complete  chapters  or  paragraphs.  It  is  scattered  sparsely 
through  a  vast  amount  of  biography  and  general  comment, 


X  PREFACE 

and  is  often  found  in  books  whose  titles  give  no  hint  of  criti- 
cal contents.  It  is  believed  that  the  bibliographies  here  given 
will  be  found  both  helpful  and  somewhat  exhaustive.  Every 
book  listed  has  been  conscientiously  examined,  besides  a  vast 
number  of  volumes  and  periodical  articles  whose  titles  seemed 
to  promise  possible  criticism,  but  which  were  found  to  contain 
only  biography  or  the  generalities  and  negations  of  criticism. 
Only  those  books  and  articles  are  listed  that  contain  positive 
and  specific  criticism.  In  general,  the  arrangement  of  the 
books  in  the  bibliographies  is  somewhat  in  the  order  of  their 
importance.  An  effort  has  been  made  to  quote  all  the  emi- 
nent critics  who  have  written  about  the  writers  concerned. 
Both  the  critical  comments  and  the  illustrations  found  in  the 
body  of  the  chapters  have  been  taken  directly  from  the  orig- 
inal sources. 

While  this  volume  is  not  intended  for  use  without  constant 
reference  to  the  works  of  the  writers  treated,  and  while  it  is 
intended,  primarily,  as  a  text-book  for  advanced  pupils  in 
English,  it  is  believed  that  it  will  be  found  not  devoid  of  in- 
terest to  the  general  reader,  even  if  used  without  reference  to 
companion  volumes  of  literature. 

In  conclusion,  the  author  desires  to  acknowledge  his  in- 
debtedness to  the  various  librarians  mentioned  in  the  preface 
to  his  "Study  of  English  Prose  Writers"  and  also  to  the 
members  of  his  "  seminary  "  in  English  at  Northwestern  Uni- 
versity, who  have  given  material  aid  in  verifying  the  bibli- 
ographies and  the  quotations.  The  omission  of  Shakespeare 
from  this  volume  is  justified  on  the  ground  that  a  proper  dis- 
cussion of  "  the  myriad-minded  one"  will  require  in  itself, 
if  not  an  entire  volume,  the  larger  part  of  one.  It  is  the 
author's  purpose  to  complete  this  series  of  "studies  "  by  the 
addition  of  such  a  volume,  for  which  the  material  is  already 

in  hand. 

j .  o.  \s. 

NORTHWESTERN  UNIVERSITY, 
EVANSTON,  ILL.,  April,  1900. 


SUGGESTIONS  TO  TEACHERS 

WHILE  the  author  does  not  assume  to  teach  the  teachers 
who  may  use  this  volume  as  a  text-book,  it  is  hoped  that  a 
detailed  statement  of  the  method  of  use  found  most  fruitful  in 
his  own  classes  will  not  appear  pedantic.  In  order  to  attain 
the  ends  enumerated  in  the  preface,  it  has  been  his  custom  to 
assign  beforehand  to  each  member  of  a  class  a  specific  section 
(usually  about  forty  pages)  of  some  work  of  the  particular 
writer  to  be  studied  at  the  time  and  to  give  the  following 
directions  to  pupils  : — 

^  i.  Read  carefully  the  section  assigned  to  you,  and  observe 
critically  every  word,  neither  very  long  nor  obsolete,  that 
impresses  you  as  not  found  in  the  vocabularies  of  ordinary 
writers  and  speakers,  especially  such  words  as  do  not  belong 
to  your  own  habitual  vocabulary.  Select  the  best  ten  such 
words,  and  write  them  after  the  figure  i  in  your  class-report, 
which  is  to  be  left  on  the  instructor's  desk  at  the  opening  of 
the  class-session. 

/^  2.  Observe  carefully  every  case  of  especial  accuracy  or  deli- 
cacy in  the  use  of  words,  and  record  the  best  five  cases  oppo- 
site the  figure  2  in  your  class-report,  giving  enough  of  the 
context  in  every  case  to  make  the  accuracy  or  delicacy  ap- 
parent. 

3.  Observe  every  distinct  idiom,  and  record,  opposite  the 
figure  3,  your  best  five  cases. 

4.  Observe  every  rhetorical  figure,  and  index,  opposite  the 
figure  4,  the  page  and  line  where  each  of  the  best  five  figures 
is  to  be  found. 

5.  Index,  opposite  the  figure  5,  the  best  three  cases  of  sus- 
pense (rhetorical  period)  to  be  found  in  your  section. 

6.  Index,  opposite  the  figure  6,   the  best  three  cases  of 
point  (epigram,  antithesis,  balance,  etc.),  if  such  be  found. 

7.  Index,  opposite  the  figure  7,   the  best  three  cases  of 
smooth  connection  found.     Observe  especially  the  connection 
between  paragraphs. 

xi 


Xll  SUGGESTIONS   TO   TEACHERS 

8.   Index,  opposite  the  figure  8,  the  best  three  cases  of  sim- 
plicity, if  such  be  found.     Define  simplicity,  for  this  purpose, 
as  the  use  of  easy,  conversational  words  and  constructions. 
/"p.   Name  the  writer's  favorite  metrical  form  or  forms,  giv- 
ing both  foot  and  verse. 

10.  Now  determine,  approximately,  in  the  following  man- 
ner, the  percentage  of  Anglo-Saxon  words  employed  by  the 
given  writer  : 

Add  the  whole  number  of  words  on  any  full  page  taken  at 
random,  and  use  the  sum  for  the  denominator  of  a  fraction. 
Then  add  the  words  on  that  page  that  are  not  apparently  de- 
rived from  Latin  or  Greek,  and  use  the  sum  for  the  numerator 
of  your  fraction ;  now  reduce  the  fraction  to  decimal  terms, 
and  the  result  will  be  the  approximate  one  sought.  Of  course, 
the  accuracy  of  the  result  thus  obtained  will  depend  on  the 
pupil's  knowledge  of  foreign  languages,  but  the  ordinary  col- 
lege student  knows  enough  of  Latin,  at  least,  to  make  this 
exercise  practicable  and  beneficial. 

Now  read  carefully  the  analysis  of  the  writer  under  consid- 
eration, to  be  found  in  this  volume,  until  you  shall  have 
gained  from  the  comments  and  illustrations  a  clear  idea  of 
each  of  his  particular  characteristics.  Then  review  the  section 
assigned  you  from  the  writer's  works,  find  there  the  best  three 
illustrations  you  can  of  each  of  the  particular  characteristics, 
and  index  in  your  class- report  the  best  illustrations  found  for 
each  point,  numbering  according  to  the  numbers  given  in  the 
text-book.  If  your  section  does  not  afford  illustrations  of  all 
the  particular  characteristics,  obtain  these  from  any  of  the 
writer's  other  works  available  so  far  as  you  have  time. 

Finally,  copy  at  the  end  of  your  class-report  at  least  one 
hundred  words  consisting  of  the  finest  and  brightest  short  pas- 
sages and  quotable  expressions  to  be  found  in  what  you  have 
read. 

If  an  average  of  forty  i2mo  pages  from  any  writer  be  as- 
signed to  every  pupil,  the  ordinary  college  upper-classman 
will  accomplish  the  work  outlined  above  in  about  five  hours 
of  faithful  application — that  is,  enough  to  entitle  him  to  an 
ordinary  credit  of  two,  perhaps  three,  week-hours.  The  work 
may  be  divided  and  considered  at  two  or  more  class-sessions, 
or  the  complete  reports  may  be  considered  at  one  time  and 
credit  be  given  accordingly.  The  number  of  illustrations 
of  each  point  in  a  writer  required  from  each  pupil  is,  of 


SUGGESTIONS   TO   TEACHERS  Xlll 

course,  arbitrary.  The  numbers  suggested  have  been  found 
practicable. 

The  recitation-hour  is  occupied  in  comparing  the  various 
pupils'  reports,  listening  to  several  illustrations  of  each  of  the 
particular  characteristics,  emphasizing  the  best  cases  under  the 
ten  general  characteristics,  and  in  answering  many  questions 
incident  to  the  discussion.  It  is  the  author's  practice  to  con- 
sider the  ten  general  characteristics  at  one  recitation,  calling 
for  definitions  of  selected  words  under  point  i,  and  comment- 
ing at  length  on  the  illustrations  offered  of  accuracy  and  deli- 
cacy in  meaning.  A  second  recitation  on  each  writer  is  then 
devoted  to  a  discussion  of  the  particular  characteristics  and  to 
the  quotations.  Written  exercises  are  also  required,  at  inter- 
vals, in  which  every  pupil  is  expected  to  make  accurate  use, 
in  sentences  of  his  own  invention,  of  the  rare  words  selected 
previously  from  the  various  writers.  This  method,  as  a  whole, 
has  never  failed  to  stimulate  interest. 

One  difficulty  confronts  the  teacher  who  would  have  his 
pupils  study  the  English  classics  by  this  or  any  other  method ; 
namely,  the  lack  of  proper  material  in  duplicate.  To  use  a 
scientific,  that  is  to  say,  a  laboratory  method,  one  must  have 
material  corresponding  in  variety  and  duplication  to  that  pro- 
vided at  each  table  in  a  chemical  laboratory  ;  but  few  school- 
boards  are  yet  willing  to  give  to  the  teacher  of  English  equal 
facilities  with  his  colleague  in  chemistry  or  biology.  The  use 
of  the  ordinary  book  of  "selections"  is  a  delusion  and  a 
snare.  As  well  expect  to  get  a  fair  idea  of  the  Atlantic  by 
examining  a  pint  bottle  of  its  water. 

Three  methods  of  meeting  this  exigency  have  been  em- 
ployed by  the  author;  none  fruitless,  but  of  varying  value. 
First,  one  may  have  every  pupil  obtain  a  cheap  edition  of 
some  complete  work  of  every  writer  to  be  studied  during  a 
given  period,  and  may  then  assign  the  same  in  sections,  dupli- 
cating according  to  the  circumstances.  The  numerous  cheap 
editions  of  detached  works  published  within  recent  years  make 
this  plan  feasible  without  unduly  burdening  the  pupils  by  the 
expense.  Many  years'  use  of  this  method  has  proved  its  prac- 
ticability. The  only  serious  objection  lies  in  the  fact  that 
often  no  single  work  of  a  writer  gives  a  sufficiently  broad 
view  of  his  style.  For  example,  characteristics  of  Goldsmith 
to  be  found  plentifully  in  his  plays  and  essays  are  not  to  be 
found  in  the  "Vicar  of  Wakefield."  Of  course,  the  ideal 


XIV  SUGGESTIONS  TO  TEACHERS 

and  the  just  way  would  be  for  the  school  to  own  the  works 
required  in  sufficient  duplicate  and  then  to  charge,  if  neces- 
sary, a  small  fee,  as  is  done  in  the  laboratories  of  natural  sci- 
ence, for  the  use  and  wear  of  these  materials. 

The  second  method  is  to  have  each  pupil  own  the  complete 
works  of  some  one  writer  to  be  studied,  and  then  to  rotate 
these  books  through  the  class.  This  method  secures  the  broad 
view  lacking  in  the  first,  but  it  is  cumbrous,  sometimes  irritat- 
ing, and  it  makes  concentration  of  attention  in  the  class-room 
impossible — since  no  two  pupils  may  be  studying  the  same 
writer  at  the  same  time. 

The  third,  and  by  far  the  best  method  yet  found,  involves 
more  preliminary  work  and  expense  than  may,  perhaps,  be 
expected  of  every  teacher.  A  set  of  books,  numerous  enough 
to  accommodate  his  present  and  probable  classes,  has  been 
made  by  the  author  by  taking  the  complete  works  of  each 
of  the  twenty  writers  here  treated,  in  sufficient  duplications 
to  make  an  average  of  about  forty  pages  for  each  pupil. 
These  have  been  divided  into  sections,  making  the  divis- 
ions at  the  beginnings  of  chapters,  and  then  the  various  piles 
of  twenty  sections  each  have  been  rebound  into  strong, 
durable  volumes.  The  result  is  a  series  of  books,  each  differ- 
ent from  the  rest,  numbered  consecutively,  and  all  together 
including  the  complete  works  of  every  writer  to  be  studied. 
These  books  are  owned  by  the  teacher  or  by  the  school,  and 
are  leased  to  the  pupil,  under  fixed  conditions,  for  a  fee  suf- 
ficient to  keep  the  books  in  repair.  Thus  the  class,  as  a 
whole,  have  the  widest  view  of  the  writer's  style,  and  the 
objections  to  the  first  two  methods  are  overcome.  The  first 
method  is  practicable  everywhere,  and  is,  on  the  whole,  very 
satisfactory,  especially  with  classes  of  moderate  size.  The 
second  is  hardly  to  be  recommended  ;  the  third  is  almost 
ideal. 


CHAUCER,   i34G(?)ri400, ,  v  ,  ..... 

Biographical  Outline. — Geoffrey  Chaucer,  born  prob- 
ably in  1340  ;  father,  John  Chaucer,  a  well-to-do,  respect- 
able vintner  living  in  Thames  Street,  London ;  of  Chaucer's 
life  until  1357  nothing  is  known;  he  acquires  a  liberal  edu- 
cation, but  where  he  studies  is  not  known;  in  1357  he 
appears  as  a  page  in  the  household  of  the  Duke  of  Clar- 
ence, second  son  of  Edward  III.  ;  here  he  continues  for  about 
eight  years,  and  sees  much  of  the  world  ;  in  1359  he  "  bears 
arms,"  and  takes  part  in  an  expedition  into  France,  but  no 
fighting  is  done ;  he  is  taken  prisoner  at  Retiers  in  Brittany 
and  is  ransomed  by  the  King  of  England  ;  in  1366  he  mar- 
ries a  lady  in  service  upon  the  Queen,  of  the  family  of  Roet, 
Christian  name  Philippa,  but  the  marriage  proves  unhappy  ; 
one  son,  Thomas,  is  born  to  them;  on  June  20,  1367, 
Chaucer  receives,  "for  good  service,"  a  pension  from  the 
King  (amount  unknown)  ;  he  is  called  at  this  time  a  yeoman 
of  the  king's  chamber  ;  in  1369  he  is  campaigning  again  in 
France;  from  June  to  September,  1370,  he  is  abroad  in  the 
King's  service.  The  years  1359-72  constitute  the  first  lit- 
erary period  of  Chaucer's  life  ;  this  period  shows  the  influ- 
ence of  the  French  poets,  and  is  first  represented  by  "  The 
Boke  of  the  Duchesse,"  written  in  1369;  many  spurious 
writings  attributed  to  Chaucer  are  found  in  this  period  ;  in 
1372,  as  a  member  of  a  public  commission,  he  visits  Genoa 
and  Florence  and  meets  Boccaccio;  in  1373  he  returns  to 
England. 

In  April,  1374,  he  receives  as  a  pension  a  daily  pitcher  of 
wine  for  life  ;  this  afterward  is  commuted  to  twenty  marks  ; 
June  8,  1374,  he  is  appointed  comptroller  of  the  customs 


2  CHAUCER 

and  subsidy  of  wools,  skins,  and  tanned  hides  in  the  port  of 
London  ;  June  i3th  he  receives  from  the  Duke  of  Lancas- 
ter a  grant  of  ^10  a  year  for  life  ;  November  8,  1375,  he  ob- 
tains a-granf  rtf' custody  of  the  lands  and  person  of  Edmund 
Staplegate  of  Kent,  which,  brings  him  about  ^£104  ;  July  12, 
1 3 'j5.  ,ho ,  receives.  - froip  t .the  King  ^71  4*.  6d.,  being  the 
price  of  certain  forfeited  wool ;  a  pound  in  Chaucer's  day 
was  worth  about  twelve  pounds  of  current  English  money 
to-day;  during  1374-86  he  lives  in  a  dwelling-house  above 
the  gate  of  Aldgate;  late  in  1376  he  is  appointed,  with  Sir 
John  Burley,  to  discharge  some  secret  service  abroad ;  in 
February,  1377,  he  is  sent  with  Sir  Thomas  Percy  on  an- 
other secret  mission  into  Flanders;  early  in  1378  he  is  in 
France;  he  is  sent  into  Lombardy  in  May,  1378,  when  the 
name  of  the  poet  John  Gower  appears  as  one  of  the  attorneys 
in  charge  of  the  office  of  comptroller  during  Chaucer's  absence; 
Chaucer  and  Gower  become  intimate  friends,  but  their  friend- 
ship is  afterward  broken  by  quarrels;  in  May,  1382,  Chaucer 
is  appointed  comptroller  of  the  petty  customs  in  the  port 
of  London,  during  the  King's  pleasure,  with  permission  to 
employ  a  deputy;  in  1386  he  is  elected  Knight  of  the  shire 
for  Kent;  at  the  close  of  1386,  on  account  of  political  dis- 
turbances, he  loses  both  of  his  offices.  The  years  1372-86 
constitute  Chaucer's  second  literary  period,  which  shows  the 
marked  influence  of  Dante  and  other  Italians,  especially  the 
Florentines;  with  the  exception  of  the  "House  of  Fame," 
written  about  1380,  Chaucer  abandons  during  this  period  the 
octosyllabic  couplet,  and  principally  uses  the  heroic  coup- 
let; he  writes  the  "Assembly  of  Foules  "  in  1375,  "  Troi- 
lus  and  Criyseyde  "  about  1380,  and  begins  the  "Legend 
of  Good  Women"  about  1382,  but  never  completes  it;  his 
wife  is  thought  to  have  died  in  1387. 

In  April,  1388,  he  goes  on  his  famous  pilgrimage  to  Can- 
terbury ;  in  May  of  this  year,  because  of  great  financial  dis- 
tress, he  sells  two  of  his  pensions  to  one  John  Sealby ;  in 


CHAUCER  3 

1389  Chaucer  is  appointed  clerk  of  the  King's  works  at  the 
palace  of  Westminster,  at  the  Tower  of  London,  at  the  castle 
of  Berkhampstead,  at  the  King's  manors  of  Kennington,  El- 
tham,  Clarendon,  Sheen,  Byfleet,  Childern  Langley,  and 
Feckenham,  and  at  the  mews  for  the  King's  falcons  at  Char- 
ing Cross ;  this  work  he  is  permitted  to  execute  by  deputy  ; 
in  July,  1390,  he  is  ordered  to  procure  workmen  and  material 
for  the  repair  of  St.  George's  Chapel,  Windsor,  and  is  also 
made  a  member  of  a  commission  to  repair  the  banks  of  the 
Thames  between  Woolwich  and  Greenwich  ;  he  shows  him- 
self unable  successfully  to  manage  these  public  affairs  ;  in 
1391  he  is  dismissed  from  his  clerkship,  but  is  immediately 
appointed,  together  with  one  Richard  Brittle,  as  forester  of 
North  Petherton  Park,  Somersetshire;  in  1397  Chaucer  is 
appointed  sole  forester ;  in  1394  he  obtains  from  King  Rich- 
ard a  pension  of  ^50  for  life ;  through  carelessness  in  the 
management  of  his  business  affairs  he  is  so  often  sued  for  debt 
that  the  King  takes  him  for  two  years  under  his  special  pro- 
tection ;  in  October,  1398,  Chaucer  receives  another  grant 
of  a  tun  of  wine  daily;  October  3,  1399,  four  days  after 
Henry  IV.  comes  to  the  throne,  in  response  to  Chaucer's  ap- 
peal to  the  King  entitled  the  "  Compleint  of  my  Purse,"  he 
receives  an  additional  pension  of  ^26  13^.  4</.,  to  be  paid 
annually  ;  he  leases  a  house  situated  in  the  garden  of  the 
Lady  Chapel,  Westminster,  and  makes  'it  his  home ;  he  dies 
October  25,  1400,  and  is  buried  in  the  "  Poets'  Corner  "  in 
Westminster  Abbey.  The  years  1386-1400  constitute  the 
third  literary  period  of  Chaucer's  life  ;  he  begins  the  great 
work  of  this  period,  the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  in  1387,  and 
completes  the  greater  part  by  the  close  of  1393  ;  he  writes 
also  during  this  period  "  L1  Envoy  a  Scogan,"  "  L' Envoy 
a  Buklon"  and  a  "  Balade  de  Vilage  sanz  Peinture" 


CHAUCER 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   CRITICISM    ON  CHAUCER. 

Lowell,  J.    R.,    "Works."     Boston,    1891,   Houghton,    Mifflin  &  Co., 

3  :   291-366. 
Lounsbury,  T.  R.,  "Studies  in  Chaucer."     New  York,  1892,  Harper, 

3  vols.,  v.  index. 

Ward,  T.  H.,  "English  Poets."      London,  1881,  Macmillan,  I  :   1^81. 
Shairp,  J.  C.,  "  Poetic  Interpretation  of  Nature."      Edinburgh,    1877, 

Douglass,  151-162. 
Hazlitt,  William,    "Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,  1884, 

Bell,  26-45. 

Morley,  H.,  "  English  Writers."     London,  1890,  Cassell,  5:   83-347. 
Rossetti*,  W.   M.,  "Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,  n.  d.,  Ward  & 

Downey,  1-18. 
Brooke,  Stopford,   "English  Literature."     New  York,  n.   d.,  American 

Book  Co.,  42-49. 

Godwin,  William,  "Life  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer."     London,  1804,  Daw- 
son,  4  vols.,  v.  index. 
Arnold,  T.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     Boston,  1885,   Ginn 

&  Heath,  25-34  and  376-381. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  "  Wit  and  Humor."     London,  1875,  Smith,  Elder  &  Co., 

66- no. 
Greene,  J.  R.,  "History  of  the  English   People."     New  York,  1879, 

Harper,  I  :  503-509. 
Ward,  A.  W.,  "The  Life  and  Works  of  Chaucer."     New  York,  1880, 

v.  index. 
Clarke,  C.   C.,  "Riches  of  Chaucer."     London,    1835,  E.  Wilson,    i- 

157- 
Lord,  John,  "Beacon  Lights  of  History."     New  York,  1886,   Fords, 

Howard  &  Hulbert,  3:   59-91. 
Phillips,  M.  G.,   A  "Popular  Manual  of  English    Literature."      New 

York,  1893,  Harper,  I  :   31-79. 
Reed,  H.,  "British  Poets."     Philadelphia,   1857,  Parry  &  MacMillan, 

i:  81-113. 
Taine,  H.  A.,  "A  History  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1875, 

Holt,  i  :  99-101  and  121-150. 
Minto,  William,  "  Characteristics  of  English  Poets. "     Edinburgh,  1874, 

Blackwood,  1-58. 
Howitt,  William,  "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     New  York, 

1847,  Harper,  i  :    1-14. 
Beers,   H.  A.,  "From   Chaucer   to    Longfellow."     New   York,    1894, 

Fiood  &  Vincent,  24-30. 


CHAUCER  5 

Warton,   T.f  "History  of  English  Poetry."     London,    1840,   Ward  & 

Lock,  2  :    127-131. 
Skeat,  W.  W.,  "The  Student's  Chaucer."     New  York,   1895,  Macmil- 

lan,  p.  13. 
Campbell,  Thomas,  "Specimens  of  the  British  Poets."     Philadelphia, 

1869,  Lippincott,  65-75. 

Belgravia,  48  :   34-46  and  160-174  (H.  R.  Haweis). 
English  Illustrated  Magazine,  1 :    733-746  (Alfred  Ainger). 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  24  :   266-279  (Stopford  Brooke) ;   27  :   383-393 

(F.  J.  Furnivall). 

Atlantic  Monthly,  40  :   592-600  (T.  R.  Lounsbury). 
Dublin  University  Magazine,  92:   26-40  (H.  R.  Haweis). 
Athenaum,  1894,  i:    742-837,  and  1892,  2:   253  (W.  W.  Skeat). 
Dial  (Chicago),  17:  260  (Hiram  Corson);   12:  351  (O.  F.  Emerson). 
Academy,  46  :    153  and  195  ;   and  33  :   292  and  307  (W.  W.  Skeat). 
Quarterly  Review,  180:   521  (W.   W.  Skeat). 
North  American  Review,  in  :    155  (J.  R.  Lowell). 
Nation,  48 :   527  and  49  :    10  (T.  R.  Lounsbury). 
Dial  (Boston),  4:   297-303  (H.  D.  Thoreau). 
Temple  Bar,  54  :   196-198  (R.  H.  Home). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

Naturalness  —  Artlessness  —  Freshness.  — 

"  Chaucer  is  the  most  natural,  as  Pope  is  the  most  artificial, 
of  the  great  English  poets.  He  not  only  observes  truly  and 
feels  keenly,  but  he  keeps  his  feeling  free  and  unspoiled  by 
his  knowledge  of  books  and  of  affairs.  .  .  .  The  study 
of  books,  in  an  age  when  study  so  often  led  to  pedantry,  left 
him  as  free  and  human  as  it  found  him.  .  .  .  His  sim- 
plicity is  that  of  elegance,  not  of  poverty.  The  quiet  uncon- 
cern with  which  he  says  his  best  things  is  peculiar  to  him 
among  English  poets.  .  .  .  He  prattles  inadvertently 
away,  and  all  the  while,  like  the  princess  in  the  story,  lets 
fall  a  pearl  at  every  other  word.  It  is  such  a  piece  of  good 
luck  to  be  natural  !  It  is  the  good  gift  which  the  fairy  grand- 
mother brings  to  her  prime  favorite  in  the  cradle.  .  .  . 
He  is  always  natural,  because  if  not  always  absolutely  new, 
he  is  always  delightfully  fresh,  because  he  sets  before  us  the 


O  CHAUCER 

world  as  it  honestly  appeared  to  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  and  not 
a  world  as  it  seemed  proper  to  certain  persons  that  it  ought 
to  appear.  .  .  .  There  is  in  him  the  exuberant  fresh- 
ness and  greenness  of  spring.  .  .  .  Reading  him  is  like 
brushing  through  the  dewy  grass  at  sunrise.  Everything  is 
new  and  sparkling  and  fragrant.  .  .  .  His  first  merit, 
the  chief  one  in  all  art,  is  sincerity.  .  .  .  He  is  the  most 
unconventional  of  poets  and  the  frankest.  If  his  story  be 
dull,  he  rids  his  hearers  of  all  uncomfortable  qualms  by  being 
himself  the  first  to  yawn.  .  .  .  His  nature  was  sensitive 
to  the  natural.  .  .  .  There  was  a  pervading  wholesome- 
ness  in  the  writings  of  this  man — a  vernal  property  that 
soothes  and  refreshes  in  a  way  of  which  no  other  has  ever 
found  the  secret.  I  repeat  to  myself  a  thousand  times, 

'  Whan  that  Aprille  with  his  shoures  sote 
The  droghte  of  Marche  hath  perced  to  the  rote 

And  smale  fowles  maken  melodye', 

and  still  at  the  thousandth  time  a  breath  of  uncontaminated 
springtide  seems  to  lift  the  hair  on  my  forehead.  The  most 
hardened  roue  of  literature  can  scarce  confront  these  simple 
and  winning  graces  without  feeling  something  of  the  unworn 
sentiment  of  his  youth  revive  in  him.  Poets  have  forgotten 
that  the  way  to  be  original  is  to  be  healthy  ;  that  the  fresh 
color  so  delightful  in  all  good  writing  is  won  by  escaping 
from  the  fixed  air  of  self  into  the  brisk  atmosphere  of  univer- 
sal sentiments ;  and  that  to  make  the  common  marvellous,  as 
if  it  were  a  revelation,  is  the  test  of  genius.  It  is  good  to  re- 
treat now  and  then  from  beyond  earshot  of  the  introspective 
confidences  of  modern  literature,  and  to  lose  ourselves  in  the 
gracious  worldliness  of  Chaucer.  .  .  .  The  quiet  un- 
concern with  which  he  says  his  best  things  is  peculiar  to 
him  among  English  poets,  though  Goldsmith,  Addison,  and 
Thackeray  have  approached  it  in  prose." — Lowell. 


CHAUCER  7 

"  There  is  no  other  English  author  so  absolutely  free,  not 
merely  from  effort  but  from  the  faintest  suggestion  of  ef- 
fort. .  .  .  No  healthier  nature  than  his  can  be  found  in 
the  whole  range  of  our  literature  among  the  poets  whose  per- 
sonality appears  prominent  in  their  writings.  There  is  not  a 
trace  of  morbid  feeling  in  his  lines,  which  still  glow  for  us 
with  all  the  freshness  of  immortal  youth." — T.  R.  Lounsbury. 

"  His  poetry  resembles  the  root  just  springing  from  the 
ground  rather  than  the  full-blown  flower.  His  muse  is  no 
<  babbling  gossip  of  the  air/  fluent  and  redundant ;  but,  like 
a  stammerer  or  a  dumb  person  that  has  just  found  the  use  of 
speech,  crowds  many  things  together  with  eager  haste,  with 
anxious  pauses  and  fond  repetitions,  to  prevent  mistakes. 
There  were  none  of  the  commonplaces  of  poetic  dic- 
tion in  our  author's  time,  no  reflected  lights  of  fancy,  no  bor- 
rowed roseate  tints;  he  was  obliged  to  inspect  things  for 
himself,  to  look  narrowly,  and  almost  to  handle  the  object, 
as  in  the  obscurity  of  morning  we  partly  see  and  partly  grope 
our  way." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  No  doubt  this  simplicity — naivete,  we  are  fond  of  calling 
it — is  one  of  the  first  delights  that  every  reader  experiences 
on  his  first  introduction  to  Chaucer." — Alfred  Ainger. 

"  Chaucer's  artlessness  is  half  the  secret  of  his  wonderful 
ease  in  story-telling,  and  is  so  engaging  that,  like  a  child's 
sweet  unconsciousness,  one  would  not  wish  it  otherwise." — 
H.  A.  Beers. 

"  Many  of  his  verses  come  to  us  like  the  prattle  of  child- 
hood. ' ' —  William  Minto. 

' '  A  charming  freshness  forms  the  atmosphere  of  all  his 
work;  he  is  perpetually  new." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 


8  CHAUCER 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 
"  A  clerk  ther  was  of  Oxen  ford  also, 
That  un-to  logik  hadde  longe  y-go. 
As  lene  was  his  hors  as  is  a  rake, 
And  he  nas  nat  right  fat,  I  undertake  ; 
But  loked  holwe,  and  ther-to  soberly. 
Ful  thredbar  was  his  overest  courtepy ; 
For  he  had  geten  him  yet  no  benefyce, 
Ne  was  so  worldly  for  to  have  offyce." 

— Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Jales. 

"  Amonges  thise  povre  folk  ther  dwelte  a  man 
Which  that  was  holden  povrest  of  hem  alle  ; 
But  hye  god  som  tyme  senden  can 
His  grace  in-to  a  litel  oxes  stalle  ; 
lanicula  men  of  that  throp  him  calle." 

—  The  Clerkes  Tale. 

"  A  povre  widwe,  somdel  stope  in  age, 
Was  whylom  dwelling  in  a  narwe  cotage, 
Bisyde  a  grove,  stonding  in  a  dale. 
This  widwe,  of  which  I  telle  yow  my  tale, 
Sin  thilke  day  that  she  was  last  a  wyf, 
In  pacience  ladde  a  ful  simple  lyf, 
For  litel  was  hir  catel  and  hir  rente  ; 
By  housbondrye,  of  such  as  God  hir  sente, 
She  fond  hir-self,  and  eek  hir  doghtren  two." 

—  The  Nonne  Preestes  Tale. 

2.  Liquid  Smoothness.—"  He  had  a  very  fine  ear  for 
the  music  of  verse,  and  the  tale  and  the  verse  go  together  like 
the  voice  and  music.  Indeed,  so  softly  flowing  and  bright 
are  they  that  to  read  them  is  like  listening  in  a  meadow  full 
of  sunshine  to  a  clear  stream  rippling  over  its  bed  of  pebbles." 
— Stopford  Brooke. 

"  He  was  .  .  .  one  of  the  best  versifiers  that  ever 
made  English  trip  and  sing  with  a  gayety  that  seemed  care- 
less, but  where  every  foot  beats  time  to  the  time  of  thought. 
He  found  our  language  lumpish,  stiff,  unwilling,  too 


CHAUCER  9 

apt  to  speak  Saxonly  in  grouty  monosyllables ;  he  left  it  en- 
riched with  the  longer  measure  of  the  Italian  and  Provencal 
poets.  He  reconciled,  in  the  harmony  of  his  verse,  the  Eng- 
lish bluntness  with  the  dignity  and  elegance  of  the  less  homely 
Southern  speech." — Lowell. 

"  Chaucer's  versification,  considering  the  time  at  which  he 
wrote,  and  that  versification  is  a  thing  in  a  great  degree  me- 
chanical, is  not  one  of  his  least  merits.  It  has  considerable 
strength  and  harmony,  and  its  apparent  deficiency  in  the 
latter  respect  arises  chiefly  from  the  alterations  which  have 
since  taken  place  in  the  pronunciation  or  mode  of  accenting 
the  words  of  the  language." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  A  little  long  they  [Chaucer's  '  Tales']  may  be;  all  the 
writings  of  this  age,  French,  or  imitated  from  the  French,  are 
born  of  too  prodigal  minds  ;  but  how  they  glide  along  !  A 
winding  stream  which  flows  smoothly  on  level  sand,  and  glit- 
ters now  and  again  in  the  sun,  is  the  only  image  we  can 
find." — Taine. 

11  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  parallel  in  Italian  verse 
of  any  date  to  the  easy  and  thoroughly  English  fluency  of 
Chaucer's  facile  riding  rhyme." — Francis  Pa/grave. 

[He  is]  "  .  .  .  the  master  who  uses  our  language 
with  a  power,  a  freedom,  a  variety,  a  rhythmic  beauty,  that, 
in  five  centuries,  not  ten  of  his  successors  have  been  found 
able  to  rival.  .  .  .  There  is  in  his  verse  a  music  which 
hardly  ever  loses  itself,  and  which  at  times  is  as  sweet  as 
that  in  any  English  poet  after  him.  .  .  .  Chaucer  is  the 
father  of  our  splendid  English  poetry,  he  is  our  '  well  of 
English  undefiled,'  because,  by  the  lovely  charm  of  his  dic- 
tion, the  lovely  charm  of  his  movement,  he  makes  an  epoch 
and  founds  a  tradition.  In  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  Milton, 
Keats,  we  can  follow  the  tradition  of  the  liquid  diction,  the 
fluid  movement  of  Chaucer." — T.  H.  Ward. 

"No  student  of  the  poet's  writings  needs  now  to  be  told 
that  the  art  of  versification  was  an  art  in  which  he  was  su- 


10  CHAUCER 

premely  interested,  and  to  which  he  gave  the  most  careful 
study.  The  result  is  that  he  became  one  of  the  greatest 
masters  of  melody  that  our  literature  has  on  its  rolls." — T.  R. 
Lounsbury. 

11  He  has  an  exquisite  ear  for  music,  and  pays  great  atten- 
tion to  the  melodious  flow  of  his  verse." — Walter  Skeat. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Hir  litel  child  lay  weping  in  hir  arm, 

And  kneling,  pitously  to  him  she  seyde, 

'  Pees,  litel  sone,  I  wol  do  thee  non  harm.' 
With  that  hir  kerchef  of  hir  heed  she  breyde, 
And  over  his  litel  yen  she  it  leyde  ; 

And  in  hir  arm  she  lulleth  it  ful  faste, 

And  in-to  heven  hir  yen  up  she  caste. 

*  Moder,'  quod  she,  '  and  mayde  bright,  Marye, 

Rewe  on  my  child,  that  of  thy  gentillesse 
Rewest  on  every  rewful  in  distresse  ! '  " 

—  The  Tale  of  the  Man  of  Lawe. 

"  The  bisy  larke,  messager  of  day, 
Salue'th  in  hir  song  the  morwe  gray  ; 
And  fyry  Phebus  ryseth  up  so  brighte, 
That  al  the  orient  laugheth  of  the  lighte, 
And  with  his  stremes  dryeth  in  the  greves 
The  silver  dropes  hanging  on  the  leves." 

—  The  Knightes  Tale. 

"  Thus  hath  this  pitous  day  a  blisful  ende, 

For  every  man  and  womman  dooth  his  might 
This  day  in  murthe  and  revel  to  dispende 
Fil  on  the  welkne  shoon  the  sterres  light. 
For  more  solempne  in  every  mannes  sight 
This  feste  was,  and  gretter  of  costage, 
Than  was  the  revel  of  hir  manage." 

—  TheClerkes  Tale. 


CHAUCER  II 

Genial  Humor— Kindly  Satire.— "  All  his  best 
work  as  a  poet  was  done  at  the  instigation  of  love  and  humor. 
It  is  remarkable  that,  while  both  his  serious  and  his  comic 
productions  are  founded,  in  most  cases,  on  pre-existing  works 
of  art,  in  the  serious  pieces  he  follows  his  original  much  more 
closely  than  in  the  comic.  In  his  tales,  as  Tyrwhitt  says,  '  He 
is  generally  satisfied  with  borrowing  a  slight  hint  of  his  sub- 
ject, which  he  varies,  enlarges,  and  embellishes  at  pleasure, 
and  gives  the  whole  the  air  and  color  of  an  original.'  His 
imagination  dwelt  by  preference  in  the  regions  of  brightness, 
sweetness,  softness,  and  laughter  in  its  broadest  as  well  as  in 
its  subtlest  varieties.  .  .  .  Affairs  of  the  heart  in  high 
and  humble  life  are  his  themes  ;  he  is  the  sympathetic  poet 
of  the  aspirations,  sorrows,  and  manifold  ludicrous  complica- 
tions of  the  tender  passion.  .  .  .  Chaucer's  humor  is  the 
most  universally  patent  and  easily  recognized  of  his  gifts.  The 
smile  or  laugh  that  he  raises,  by  refined  irony  or  by  broad  jest 
and  incident,  is  conspicuously  genial.  The  great  criterion  of 
good  nature,  the  indispensable  basis  of  humor,  is  the  power  of 
making  and  sustaining  a  jest  at  one's  own  expense ;  and  none 
of  our  humorists  bears  this  test  so  well  as  Chaucer.  He  often 
harps  on  his  own  supposed  imperfections,  his  ignorance  of 
love,  his  want  of  rhetorical  skill,  his  poverty." — William 
Minto. 

"  A  hearty  laugh  and  a  thrust  in  the  ribs  are  his  weapons. 
He  makes  fun  of  you  to  your  face ;  and  even  if  you  wince  a 
little,  you  cannot  help  joining  in  his  mirth.  ...  In 
Chaucer's  poetry  the  humor  is  playing  all  the  time  round  the 
horizon  like  heat-lightning.  It  is  unexpected  and  unpredict- 
able ;  but  as  soon  as  you  turn  away  from  watching  for  it,  be- 
hold it  flashes  again  as  innocently  and  softly  as  ever. 
The  satire  of  the  other  [Chaucer]  is  genial  with  the  broad 
sunshine  of  humor,  into  which  the  victims  walk  forth  with  a 
delightful  unconcern,  laying  aside  of  themselves  the  disguises 
that  seem  to  make  them  uncomfortably  warm,  till  they  have 


12  CHAUCER 

made  a  thorough  betrayal  of  themselves  so  unconsciously  that 
we  almost  pity  while  we  laugh.  .  .  .  There  is  no  touch 
of  cynicism  in  all  he  wrote.  .  .  .  It  is  true  ...  of 
his  humor  that  it  pervades  his  comic  tales  like  sunshine,  and 
never  dazzles  the  attention  by  a  sudden  flash.  Sometimes  he 
brings  it  in  parenthetically,  and  insinuates  a  sarcasm  so  slyly 
as  almost  to  slip  by  without  our  notice.  Sometimes  he  turns 
round  upon  himself  and  smiles  at  a  trip  he  has  made  into  fine 
writing.  .  .  .  Nay,  sometimes  it  twinkles  roguishly 
through  his  very  tears.  .  .  .  Chaucer  drew  from  the  South 
a  certain  airiness  of  sentiment  and  expression,  a  felicity  of 
phrase,  and  an  elegance  of  turn  hitherto  unprecedented  and 
hardly  yet  matched  in  our  literature,  but  all  the  while  kept  firm 
hold  of  his  native  soundness  of  understanding  and  that  genial 
humor  which  seems  to  be  the  proper  element  of  worldly  wis- 
dom. .  .  .  His  humor  ...  in  its  suavity,  its  per- 
petual presence,  and  its  shy  unobtrusiveness,  is  something 
wholly  new  in  literature." — Lowell. 

"  He  brightens  his  delineations  with  kindly  and  enjoying 
humor — the  humor  of  a  man  who  knows  life  in  its  multiform 
aspects  from  observing  it  with  mingled  keenness  and  sympathy 
and  mixing  in  it  personally." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  There  is  [in  his  verse]  a  sweet  humanity,  which  takes  all 
bitterness  from  his  satire,  and  exhibits  some  degree  of  gracious 
sympathy  with  every  sort  and  condition  of  men.  .  .  . 
His  humor  is  usually  subtile  and  playful ;  even  at  its  broadest 
and  coarsest  it  is  genuine,  and  has  at  least  the  artist's  apology 
to  excuse  it."-^/.  C.  Robertson. 

"He  never  sneers,  for  he  had  a  wide  charity,  and  we  can 
always  smile  in  his  pages  at  the  follies  and  forgive  the  sins  of 
men." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  The  most  striking  thing  about  Chaucer's  humor  is  its 
great  kindliness.  He  laughs,  but  not  maliciously.  He  has 
nothing  of  the  partisan,  for  he  looks  at  the  whole  world  with 
the  same  mirthful  gaze.  Nothing  is  too  high  for  his  laughter, 


CHAUCER  13 

nothing  is  too  low.  .  .  .  He  does  not  run  after  a  jest ; 
he  does  not  joke  merely  for  the  sake  of  joking.  He  has  his 
humor  under  such  perfect  control  that  he  can  shift  his 
humorous  point  of  view  as  he  changes  from  one  speaker  to  an- 
other."— O.  W.  Holmes. 

"  Concerning  Chaucer's  use  of  the  power  which  he  in  so 
large  a  measure  possessed,  viz.,  that  of  covering  with  ridicule 
the  palpable  vices  or  weaknesses  of  the  classes  or  kinds  of  men 
represented  by  some  of  his  character-types,  one  assertion  may 
be  made  with  tolerable  safety.  Whatever  may  have  been  the 
first  stimulus  and  the  ultimate  scope  of  the  wit  and  humor 
which  he  here  expended,  they  are  not  to  be  explained  as 
moral  indignation  in  disguise.  And  in  truth  Chaucer's  mer- 
riment flows  spontaneously  from  a  source  very  near  the  sur- 
face ;  he  is  so  extremely  diverting  because  he  is  so  extremely 
diverted  himself."—/:  If.  Ward. 

"His  satire  ...  is  genial.  For  the  lowest  he  has 
no  scorn  as  he  has  for  the  hypocrisies  of  men  who  wear 
religion  as  a  cloak  to  their  offences." — Henry  Morley. 

"  The  native  bent  of  his  genius,  the  hilarity  of  his  temper, 
betrays  itself  by  playful  strokes  of  raillery  and  concealed  satire 
when  least  expected.  His  fine  irony  may  have  sometimes 
left  his  commendations,  or  even  the  objects  of  his  admiration, 
in  a  very  ambiguous  condition." — Benjamin  Disraeli. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  yerd  she  hadde,  enclosed  al  aboute 
With  stikkes,  and  a  drye  dich  with-oute, 
In  which  she  had  a  cok,  hight  Chauntecleer, 
In  al  the  land  of  crowing  nas  his  peer. 
His  vois  was  merier  than  the  mery  orgon 
On  messe-dayes  that  in  the  chirche  gon  ; 
Wei  sikerer  was  his  crowing  in  his  logge 
Than  is  a  clokke,  or  an  abbey  orlogge. 
By  nature  knew  he  ech  ascencioun 
Of  equinoxial  in  thilke  toun  ; 


14  CHAUCER 

For  whan  degrees  fiftene  were  ascended, 
Thanne  crewe  he,  that  it  might  nat  be  amended." 

—  The  Nonne  Preestes  Tale. 

"  Of  Sampson  now  wol  I  na-more  seyn. 
Beth  war  by  this  ensample  old  and  playn 
That  no  men  telle  hir  conseil  til  hir  wyves, 
Of  swich  thing  as  they  wolde  han  secree  fayn, 
If  that  it  touche  hir  limmes  or  hir  lyves." 

—  The  Monkcs  Tale. 

"  He  was  an  esy  man  to  yeve  penaunce, 
Ther  as  he  wiste  to  han  a  good  pitaunce ; 
For  unto  a  povre  ordre  for  to  yive 
Is  signe  that  a  man  is  wel  y-shrive. 
For  if  he  yaf,  he  dorste  make  avaunt, 
He  wiste  that  a  man  was  repentaunt. 
For  many  a  man  so  hard  is  of  his  herte, 
He  may  nat  wepe,  al-thogh  him  sore  smerte. 
Therefore,  instede  of  weping  and  preyeres, 
Men  moot  yeve  silver  to  the  povre  freres." 

— Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

4.  Sympathy  with  Suffering— Simple   Pathos.— 

"  In  depth  of  simple  pathos  and  intensity  of  conception, 
never  swerving  from  his  subject,  I  think  no  other  writer 
comes  near  him,  not  even  the  Greek  tragedians." — William 
Hazlitt. 

"  The  deepest  pathos  of  the  drama  .  .  .  is  sudden  as 
a  stab,  while  in  narrative  it  is  more  or  less  suffused  with  pity, 
a  feeling  capable  of  prolonged  sustention.  This  presence 
of  the  author's  own  sympathy  is  noticeable  in  all  Chaucer's 
pathetic  passages.  .  .  .  When  he  comes  to  the  sorrow 
of  his  story,  he  seems  to  croon  over  his  thoughts,  to  soothe 
them  and  dwell  upon  them  with  a  kind  of  pleased  compas- 
sion, as  a  child  treats  a  wounded  bird  which  he  fears  to  grasp 
too  tightly,  and  yet  cannot  make  up  his  mind  wholly  to  let 
go. ' ' — Lowell. 


CHAUCER  1$ 

"  He  is  at  heart  surpassingly  gentle  and  compassionate. 
The  innocence  and  sufferings  of  women  move  him  deeply. ' ' 
— Henry  S.  Pane  oast. 

"  Pity  for  inevitable  suffering  is  a  note  of  Chaucer's 
mind  which  forever  distinguishes  him  from  Boccaccio  and 
makes  him  out  as  the  true  forerunner  of  the  poet  of  Hamlet 
and  Othello.  .  .  .  He  is  overcome  by  '  pity  and  ruth  ' 
as  he  reads  of  suffering,  and  his  eyes  '  wax  foul  and  sore  '  as 
he  prepares  to  tell  of  its  infliction." — T.  H.  Ward. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Alias,  the  wo  !  alias,  the  peynes  stronge, 
That  I  for  yow  have  suffred,  and  so  longe  ! 
Alias,  the  deeth  !  alias,  myn  Emelye  ! 
Alias,  departing  of  our  companye  ! 
Alias,  myn  hertes  quene  !  alias,  my  wyf ! 
Myn  hertes  lady,  endere  of  my  lyf ! 
What  is  this  world  ?   what  asketh  men  to  have  ? 
Now  with  his  love,  now  in  his  colde  grave 
Allone,  with-outen  any  companye." 

—  The  Knightes  Tale. 

"  O,  which  a  pitous  thing  it  was  to  see 

Hir  swowning,  and  hir  humble  voys  to  here  ! 
'  Grauntmercy,  lord,  that  thanke  I  yow,'  quod  she, 
*  That  ye  han  saved  me  my  children  dere  ! 
Now  rekke  I  never  to  ben  deed  right  here  ; 
Sith  I  stonde  in  your  love  and  in  your  grace, 
No  fors  of  deeth,  ne  whan  my  spirit  pace.' " 

—  The  Clerkes  Tale. 

"  Have  ye  nat  seyn  som  tyme  a  pale  face 

Among  a  prees,  of  him  that  hath  be  lad 
Toward  his  deeth,  wher-as  him  gat  no  grace 
And  swich  a  colour  in  his  face  hath  had, 
Men  mighte  knowe  his  face,  that  was  bistad, 
Amonges  alle  the  faces  in  that  route  : 
So  stant  Custance,  and  loketh  hir  aboute." 

—  The  Man  of  Lawes  Tale, 


16  CHAUCER 

5.  Respect  for  Womanhood. — "  Chaucer  alone,  in 
his  time,  felt  the  whole  beauty  of  womanhood,  and  felt  it 
most  in  its  most  perfect  type— in  wifehood,  with  the  modest 
graces  of  the  daisy,  with  its  soothing  virtues,  and  its  power  of 
healing  inward  wounds.  Physicians  in  his  day  ascribed  such 
power  to  the  daisy,  which,  by  Heaven's  special  blessing,  was 
made  common  to  all,  and  was  the  outward  emblem  also  of 
the  true  and  pure  wife  in  its  heart  of  gold  and  its  white  crown 
of  innocence.  ...  As  the  range  of  Shakespeare  was 
from  Imogen  to  Dame  Quickly  and  lower,  so  the  range  of 
Chaucer  is  from  the  ideal  patience  of  the  wife  Griselda,  or  the 
girlish  innocence  and  grace  of  Emelie  in  the  *  Knight's  Tale  ' 
to  the  Wife  of  Bath  and  lower ;  and  in  each  of  these  great 
poets  the  predominating  sense  is  of  the  beauty  and  honor  of 
true  womanhood.  If  there  were  many  Englishmen  who  read 
what  we  have  of  the  '  Canterbury  Tales  '  straight  through,  it 
would  not  be  necessary  to  say  that,  even  in  the  fragment  as 
it  stands,  expression  of  the  poet's  sense  of  the  worth  and 
beauty  of  womanhood,  very  greatly  predominates  over  his 
satire  of  the  weaknesses  of  women.  .  .  .  In  a  sense  of 
his  own,  he  takes  the  daisy  for  his  flower,  and  rises  high 
above  all  poets  of  his  age  in  honor  to  marriage  and  praise  of 
the  purity  of  the  wife's  white  daisy  crown." — Henry  Morley. 

"  We  have  no  hesitation  in  placing  him  very  high  in  the 
list  of  those  who  have  exalted  our  ideal  of  the  womanly  char- 
acter. Womanliness  is  indeed  the  characteristic  feature  of 
Chaucer's  women. ' ' — Alfred  Ainger. 

"  His  works  show  that  he  was  not  likely  to  fail  in  that 
respectfulness  that  women  are  said  to  love.  He  is  on  all  oc- 
casions the  champion  of  '  gentle  woman,  gentle  creatures ;  ' 
and  however  much  sly  fun  he  makes  of  their  foibles,  he  com- 
pensates amply  by  frequently  expressed  indignation  at  their 
wrongs  and  by  praises  of  their  many  virtues.  .  .  .  All 
Chaucer's  works  show  that  he  was  most  intimately  pervaded 
by  chivalrous  sentiment.  .  .  .  It  is  womanhood  in  dis- 


CHAUCER  17 

tress  that  enters  his  heart  with  the  keenest  stroke. 
His  gallery  of  distressed  heroines  was  as  wide  as  the  range  of 
legend  and  history  that  was  known  to  him.  .  .  .  The 
thought  of  their  suffering  agitates  him,  destroys  his  compos- 
ure ;  he  cannot  proceed  without  stopping  to  express  his  com- 
passion or  to  appeal  to  Heaven  against  the  caprice  of  Fortune 
or  the  wickedness  of  men." — William  Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Lo,  what  gentillesse  these  women  have, 

If  we  coude  know  it  for  our  rudenesse  ! 
How  busie  they  be  us  to  keepe  and  save, 
Both  in  hele,  and  also  in  sikenesse ! 
And  always  right  sorrie  for  our  distresse, 
In  every  manner  ;  thus  shew  thy  routhe, 
That  in  hem  is  al  goodnesse  and  trouthe." 

— A  Praise  of  Women. 

"  O  blissful  ordre,  of  wedlok  precious, 
Thou  art  so  mery,  and  eek  so  vertuous, 
And  so  commended  and  appreved  eek, 
That  every  man  that  halt  him  worth  a  leek, 
Up-on  his  bare  knees  oghte  al  his  lyf 
Thanken  his  god  that  him  hath  sent  a  wyf ; 
Or  elles  preye  to  god  him  for  to  sende 
A  wyf,  to  laste  un-to  his  lyves  ende." 

—  The  Marchante  Tale. 

"  In  hir  is  heigh  beautee  with-oute  pryde, 
Yowthe,  with-oute  grenehede  or  folye  ; 
To  alle  hir  werkes  vertu  is  hir  gyde, 
Humblesse  hath  slayn  in  hir  al  tirannye. 
She  is  mirour  of  alle  curteisye  ; 
Hir  herte  is  verray  chambre  of  holinesse, 
Hir  hand,  ministre  of  fredom  for  almesse." 

— The  Tale  of  the  Man  of  Lawe. 

6.   Love  of  Nature. — "  His  descriptions  of  nature  are 
as  true  as   his  sketches  of  human  character ;  and  incidental 

2 


18  CHAUCER 

touches  in  him  reveal  his  love  of  the  one  as  unmistakably  as 
his  unflagging  interest  in  the  study  of  the  other.  .  .  . 
When  he  went  forth  on  these  April  and  May  mornings,  it 
was  not  solely  with  the  intent  of  composing  a  roundelay  or  a 
marguerite ;  but  we  may  be  well  assured  that  he  allowed  the 
songs  of  the  little  birds,  the  perfume  of  the  flowers,  and  the 
fresh  verdure  of  the  English  landscape  to  sink  into  his  very 
soul."— T.  H.  Ward. 

11  He  was  the  first  who  made  the  love  of  nature  a  dis- 
tinct element  in  our  poetry.  .  .  .  The  delightful  and 
simple  familiarity  of  the  poet  with  the  meadows,  brooks, 
and  birds,  and  his  love  of  them,  has  the  effect  of  making 
every  common  aspect  of  nature  new  ;  the  May  morning  is 
transfigured  by  his  enjoyment  of  it ;  the  grass  of  the  field  is 
seen  as  those  in  Paradise  beheld  it ;  the  dew  lies  on  our 
heart  as  we  go  forth  with  the  poet  in  the  dawning,  and  the 
wind  blows  past  our  ear  like  the  music  of  an  old  song  heard 
in  the  days  of  childhood." — Stopf or d  Brooke. 

"  Chaucer's  heart  fitted  him  very  well  to  be  the  poet  of 
tender  sentiment.  He  seems  to  have  dwelt  with  fond  obser- 
vation on  everything  that  was  bright  and  pretty,  from  '  the 
smale  fowles  that  slepen  all  the  night  with  open  eye,'  to  the 
little  herd-grooms  playing  on  their  pipes  of  green  corn.  He 
watched  the  little  conies  at  their  play,  the  little  squirrels  at 
their  sylvan  feasts.  .  .  .  But  of  all  things  of  beauty  in 
nature,  the  singing-birds  were  his  most  especial  favorites. 
He  often  dwells  on  the  ravishing  sweetness  of  their  melodies." 
—  William  Minto. 

"  The  Troubadour  hailed  the  return  of  spring  ;  but  with 
him  it  was  a  piece  of  empty  ritualism.  Chaucer  took  a  true 
delight  in  the  new  green  of  the  leaves  and  the  return  of  the 
singing-birds.  ...  He  has  never  so  much  as  heard  of 
the  '  burthen  and  mystery  of  all  this  unintelligible  world.' 
His  flowers  and  trees  and  birds  have  never  bothered  them- 
selves with  Spinoza.  He  himself  sings  more  like  a  bird  than 


CHAUCER  19 

any  other  poet,  because  it  never  occurred  to  him,  as  to  Goethe, 
that  he  ought  to  do  so.  He  pours  himself  out  in  sincere  joy 
and  thankfulness.  He  is  the  first  great  poet  who  really  loved 
outward  nature  as  the  source  of  conscious  pleasurable  emo- 
tion. .  .  .  Chaucer  took  a  true  delight  in  the  new 
green  of  the  leaves  and  the  return  of  singing-birds — a  delight 
as  simple  as  that  of  Robin  Hood." — Lowell. 

"  On  the  first  of  May  Chaucer  rises  and  goes  out  into  the 
meadows.  Love  enters  his  heart  with  the  balmy  air;  the 
landscape  is  transfigured  and  the  birds  begin  to  sing." — 
Taine. 

"  He  is,  more  than  all  [other]  English  poets,  the  poet  of 
the  lusty  spring,  of  '  Aprille  '  with  her  '  shovvres  sweet '  and 
the  '  foules '  song ;  of '  May  with  all  her  floures  '  and  her 
green  ;  of  the  new  leaves  in  the  wood  and  the  meadows  new 
— powdered  with  the  daisy,  the  mystic  Marguerite  of  his 
'  Legend  of  Good  Women. '  A  fresh,  vernal  air  blows 
through  all  his  pages." — H.  A.  Beers. 

"  Chaucer  had  an  equal  eye  for  truth  of  nature  and  dis- 
crimination of  character  ;  and  his  interest  in  what  he  saw 
gave  new  distinctness  and  force  to  his  power  of  observation. 
Nature  is  the  soul  of  art :  there  is  a  strength  as  well 
as  a  simplicity  in  the  imagination  that  reposes  entirely  on 
nature  that  nothing  else  can  supply. 

"  Chaucer's  descriptions  of  natural  scenery  .  .  .  have 
a  local  truth  and  freshness  which  gives  the  very  feeling  of 
the  air,  the  coolness  or  moisture  of  the  ground." — William 
Hazlitt. 

"  No  poet  ever  loved  nature  more  than  Chaucer  did  ;  but 
it  was  with  a  simple,  unreflectiye,  child-like  love. 
It  was  nature  in  her  '  first  intention/  her  most  obvious  as- 
pects, that  attracted  him.  .  .  .  It  is  not  on  nature  as  a 
great  whole,  much  less  as  an  abstraction,  that  his  thought 
usually  dwells.  It  is  the  outer  world  in  its  most  concrete 
forms  and  objects  with  which  he  delights  to  interweave  his 


2O  CHAUCER 

poetry — the  homely  scenes  of  South  England,  the  oaks  and 
other  forest  trees,  the  green  meadows,  quiet  fields,  and  com- 
fortable farms,  as  well  as  the  great  castles  where  the  nobles 
dwelt.  ...  I  know  not  that  the  habitual  forms  of  Eng- 
lish landscape,  those  that  are  most  rural  and  most  unchanged, 
have  ever  since  found  a  truer  poet,  one  who  brings  before  the 
mind  the  scene  and  the  spirit  of  it,  uncolored  by  any  inter- 
vention of  his  own  thought  or  sentiment.  And  his  favorite 
season — it  is  the  May-time.  Of  this  he  is  never  tired  of  sing- 
ing."—/. C.  Shairp. 

"  Lover  of  men  and  lover  of  books,  Chaucer  is  no  less  the 
lover  of  nature,  for  her  alone  delighting  to  leave  his  studies. 
We  must  think  of  him  as  he  shows  himself  in  one 
of  his  poems,  going  out  alone  in  the  meadows  in  the  still- 
ness of  early  morning  and  falling  on  his  knees  to  greet  the 
daisy." — Henry  S.  Pancoast. 

' «  How  joyously  he  watches  the  daisy — 

'  Knelyng  alway  til  it  unclosed  was 
Uppon  the  smale,  softe,  swete,  gras* — 

and  the  '  vyolet  al  newe  and  fresche  perwynke  (French  per- 
venche,  periwinkle),  and  the  lilye  on  her  stalke  grene,  and  the 
may-blossoms  partie  whyte  and  rede.'  How  he  notes  the 
glimpsing  of  eyes  through  the  leaves,  the  squirrels  sitting  up 
on  the  branches  '  making  feasts,'  the  hives  of  bees,  the  fun  of 
stamping  for  eels,  the  rooks'  nests  on  the  great  trees,  and  the 
thousand  things  showing  so  strong  a  love  of  country  sights 
and  sounds,  animals,  and  birds,  and  such  knowledge  of  them, 
that  we  half  suspect  that  he  was  not  brought  up  as  a  boy  in 
London  town." — H.  R.  Haweis. 


CHAUCER  21 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  On  every  bough  the  briddes  herde  I  singe, 

With  voys  of  aungel  in  hir  armonye, 
Som  besyed  hem  hir  briddes  forth  to  bringe, 
The  litel  conyes  to  hir  pley  gunne  hye, 
And  further  al  aboute  I  gan  espye 
The  dredful  roo,  the  buk,  the  hert,  and  hinde, 
Squerels  and  beestes  smale  of  gentil  kinde." 

—  7 he  Parlement  of  Foules. 

"  For  May  wol  have  no  slogardye  anight, 
The  sesoun  priketh  every  gentil  herte, 
And  maketh  him  out  of  his  sleep  to  sterte, 
And  seieth,  '  Arys  and  do  thyn  observaunce.'  " 

—  The  Knightes  Tale. 

11  And  anone  as  I  the  day  aspide, 
No  longer  would  I  in  my  bed  abide, 
But  to  a  wood  that  was  fast  by 
I  went  forth  alone  boldely, 
And  held  the  way  down  by  a  brookes  side, 
Till  I  came  to  a  laund  of  white  and  greene, 
So  faire  a  one  had  I  never  in  been, 
The  ground  was  greene,  ypoudred  with  daisie, 
The  floures  and  the  greves  like  hie, 
Al  greene  and  white,  was  nothing  elles  scene. 

And  the  river  that  I  sat  upon, 
It  made  such  a  noise  as  it  ron, 
Accordaunt  with  the  birdes  armony, 
Me  thought  it  was  the  beste  melody 
That  mighte  ben  yheard  of  any  mon." 

—  The  Cuckoo  and  the  Nightingale. 

7.  Sincerity— Elevation  of  Character.— "  He  knew 
and  lived  in  the  society  of  persons  of  rank,  yet  long  before 
Tennyson  he  placed  the  kind  heart  above  the  coronet  and 


22  CHAUCER 

faithfulness  over  the  claims  of  high  descent.  Nobility  of 
soul  had  ever  his  warmest  admiration,  without  regard  to  the 
rank  of  life  in  which  it  was  revealed.  .  .  .  Chaucer  has 
no  animosities  and  cherishes  no  grudge." — -J.  C.  Robertson. 

"  Here  was  a  healthy,  hearty  man,  so  genuine  that  he  need 
not  ask  whether  he  were  genuine  or  no,  so  sincere  as  quite  to 
forget  his  own  sincerity,  so  truly  pious  that  he  could  be  happy 
in  the  best  world  God  chose  to  make,  so  humane  that  he  loved 
even  the  foibles  of  his  kind.  Here  was  a  truly  epic  poet, 
without  knowing  it,  who  did  not  waste  time  in  considering 
whether  his  age  were  good  or  bad,  but,  quietly  taking  it  for 
granted  as  the  best  that  ever  was  or  could  be  for  him,  has  left 
us  such  a  picture  of  contemporary  life  as  no  man  ever  painted. 
He  could  look  to  God  without  abjectness  and  on 
man  without  contempt." — Lowell. 

11  The  general  tenor  of  his  works  is  decidedly  kindly,  hon- 
orable, and  sincere,  permeated  with  high  Christian  feeling. 
What  he  says  of  human  happiness  and  honor  and 
duty  could  only  have  been  said  by  a  man  with  a  conscience, 
nursed  though  he  had  been  through  the  thorny  ways  of  a 
court.  .  .  .  No  one  ever  uttered  loftier  words  on  the 
meaning  of  true  'gentrie,'  in  the  sense  of  gentle  birth,  or 
words  that  better  commend  themselves  to  an  honest  republi- 
can age,  though  they  were  reiterated  by  a  courtier.  He  puts 
a  very  earnest  protest  into  the  Wife  of  Bath's  mouth  against 
those  who,  '  boren  of  a  gentil  house  .  .  .  n'yl  himselve 
no  gentil  dedes;  '  'only  a  villain's  sinful  dedes  makith  a 
cherl,'  he  says,  and  follows  it  up  with  the  prettiest  definition 
of  noble  descent,  quite  epigrammatic  in  its  grace  and  truth: 

'  For  gentilesse  n'  is  but  the  renomee 
Of  thine  anncestres.'  " 

— H.  R.  Haweis. 

"  In  many  passages  he  insists  on  the  value  of  the  purity  of 
womanhood  and  the  nobility  of  manhood,  taking  the  latter 
to  be  dependent  upon  good  feeling  and  courtesy.  As  he 


CHAUCER  23 

says  in  the  •  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale,'  the  '  man  who  is  always  the 
most  virtuous,  and  most  endeavors  to  be  constant  in  the  per- 
formance of  gentle  deeds,  is  to  be  taken  to  be  the  greatest 
gentleman.  Christ  desires  that  we  should  derive  our  gentle- 
ness from  Him,  and  not  from  our  ancestors,  however  rich.'  " 
—  Walter  Skeat. 

"  He  is  content  to  find  grace  and  beauty  in  truth.  He 
exhibits,  for  the  most  part,  the  naked  object,  with  little  drap- 
ery thrown  over  it.  His  metaphors,  which  are  few,  are  not 
for  ornament  but  use,  and  as  like  as  possible  to  the  things 
themselves.  He  does  not  affect  to  show  his  power  over  the 
reader's  mind  but  the  power  which  his  subject  has  over  his 
own.  .  .  .  There  is  no  artificial  pompous  display,  but  a 
strict  parsimony  of  the  poet's  materials,  like  the  rude  simplic- 
ity of  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  .  .  .  The  poetry  of 
Chaucer  has  a  religious  sanctity  about  it,  connected  with  the 
manners  and  superstition  of  the  age.  It  has  all  the  spirit  of 
martyrdom. ' ' —  William  Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  firste  stok  fader  of  gentilesse, 

What  man  that  claymeth  gentil  for  to  be, 
Must  folowe  his  trace  and  alle  his  wittes  dresse 
Vertu  to  sewe  and  vyces  for  to  flee. 
For  unto  vertu  longeth  dignitee, 
And  noght  the  revers  saufly  dar  I  deme, 
Al  were  he  mytre,  croune,  or  diademe. 

"  The  firste  stok  was  ful  of  rightwisnesse, 

Trewe  of  his  word,  sobre,  pitous,  and  free, 
Clene  of  his  goste  and  loved  besinesse, 
%  Ageinst  the  vyce  of  slouthe  in  honestee  ; 

And  but  his  heir  love  vertu,  as  dide  he, 
He  is  noght  gentil,  thogh  he  riche  seme, 
Al  were  he  mytre,  croune,  or  diademe." 

— A  Ballad  on  Gentilesse. 


24  CHAUCER 

"  Fly  from  the  prease  and  dwell  with  soothfastnesse. 

Suffise  unto  thy  good  though  it  be  small ; 
For  horde  hath  hate  and  climbing  tikelnesse, 
Prease  hath  envy,  and  wele  is  blent  over  all ; 
Savour  no  more  than  thee  behove  shall ; 
Rede  well  thy  selfe  that  other  folke  canst  rede, 
And  trouth  shall  thee  deliver,  it  is  no  drede." 

— Good  Counsail. 

"  For  o  thing,  sires,  saufly  dar  I  seye, 
That  frendes  everich  other  moot  obeye, 
If  they  wol  longe  holden  compnye, 
Love  wol  nat  ben  constreyned  by  maistrye  ; 
When  maistrie  comth,  the  god  of  love  anon 
Beteth  hise  winges,  and  farewel !  he  is  gon  ! 
Love  is  a  thing  as  any  spirit  free  ; 
Wommen  of  kinde  desiren  libertee, 
And  nat  to  be  constreyned  as  a  thral ; 
And  so  don  men,  if  I  soth  seyen  shal." 

—  The  Frankeleyns  Tale. 

8.  Narrative  Power. — "  Chaucer  is  a  great  narrative 
poet.  In  this  respect  he  has  no  equal  in  our  tongue.  .  .  . 
Chaucer's  success  as  a  narrative  poet  is  largely  due  to  the  ease 
and  fulness  with  which  he  makes  us  enter  into  his  own  thoughts 
and  feelings.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  more  conspicuous 
in  the  '  Canterbury  Tales  '  than  the  individuality  of  their 
composer.  The  one  distinguishing  trait  that  makes  him  the 
great  story-teller  of  the  English  language  is  that  he  seizes  upon 
the  central  points  of  interest,  and  lets  everything  else  go  by 
that  does  not  contribute  to  the  effectiveness  of  their  represen- 
tation."— T.  R.  Lounsbury. 

"  There  is  something  more  pleasant  than  a  fine  narrative, 
and  that  is  a  collection  of  fine  narratives,  especially  when  the 
narratives  are  all  of  different  colorings.  .  .  .  Chaucer  is 
like  a  jeweller  with  his  hands  full :  pearls  and  glass  beads, 
sparkling  diamonds  and  common  agates,  black  jet  and  ruby 
roses,  all  that  history  and  imagination  had  been  able  to  gather 


CHAUCER  25 

and  fashion  during  three  centuries  in  the  East,  in  France,  in 
Wales,  in  Provence,  in  Italy.  All  that  had  rolled  his  way, 
clashed  together,  broken,  or  polished  by  the  stream  of  centuries, 
and  by  the  great  jumble  of  human  memory,  he  holds  in  his 
hands,  arranges  it,  composes  therefrom  a  long  sparkling  orna- 
ment, with  twenty  pendants,  a  thousand  facets,  which  by 
its  splendor,  varieties,  contrasts  may  attract  and  satisfy  the 
eyes  of  those  most  greedy  for  amusement  and  novelty." 
—  Taine. 

"  Chaucer  is  a  great  narrative  poet,  and  in  this  species  of 
poetry,  though  the  author's  personality  should  never  be  ob- 
truded, it  yet  unconsciously  pervades  the  whole,  and  commu- 
nicates an  individual  quality — a  kind  of  flavor  of  its  own. 
.  .  .  The  pleasure  Chaucer  takes  in  telling  his  stories  has 
in  itself  the  effect  of  consummate  skill,  and  makes  us  follow  all 
the  windings  of  his  fancy  with  sympathetic  interest.  His  best 
tales  run  on  like  one  of  our  inland  rivers,  sometimes  hasten- 
ing a  little  and  turning  upon  themselves  in  eddies  that  dimple 
without  retarding  the  current ;  sometimes  loitering  smoothly, 
while  here  and  there  a  quiet  thought,  a  tender  feeling,  a 
pleasant  image,  a  golden-hearted  verse,  opens  quietly  as  a 
water-lily,  to  float  on  the  surface  without  breaking  it  into 
ri  pples. ' ' — Lowell. 

"  He  is  the  prince  of  story-tellers  ;  and  however  much  he 
may  move  others,  he  is  not  moved  himself.  .  .  .  The 
'  Canterbury  Tales  ' — a  story-book  than  which  the  world  does 
not  possess  a  better." — Alexander  Smith. 

"  He  conducts  us  through  his  narratives  with  facile  elo- 
quence, smoothing  over  what  is  unpalatable,  waving  aside 
digressions,  interspersing  easy  reflections,  never  staying  too 
long  upon  one  topic.  .  .  .  No  poet  could  be  more  ani- 
mated than  Chaucer.  All  his  works  are  full  of  bright  color, 
fresh  feeling,  rapid  ease,  and  gaiety  of  movement.  There  is 
no  tedious  dulness  in  his  descriptions,  no  lingering  in  the 
march  of  his  narrative.  With  all  his  loquacity  and  vivacity, 


26  CHAUCER 

he  knows  when  his  readers  have  had  enough  of  one  thing, 
and  passes  easily  on  to  something  else.  The  ease  of  his 
transitions  is  very  remarkable ;  ...  he  always  keeps  his 
main  subject  firmly  and  clearly  in  view ;  and  his  well-marked 
digressions  add  to  the  general  animation  by  dispersing  the 
feeling  of  rigid  restraint  without  tending  in  the  least  to  pro- 
duce confusion."-  —  William  Minto. 

"  He  is  our  greatest  story-teller  in  verse.  All  the  best 
tales  are  told  easily,  sincerely,  with  great  grace,  and  yet  with 
so  much  homeliness  that  a  child  would  understand  them." 
— Stopford  Brooke. 

"  A  great  poet  by  virtue  of  his  natural  gifts,  he  was  the 
greatest  of  narrative  poets  by  virtue  of  his  knowledge  of  man- 
kind."—^. If.  Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  This  duk,  of  whom  I  make  mencioun, 
When  he  was  come  almost  unto  the  toun, 
In  al  his  wele  and  in  his  moste  pryde, 
He  was  war,  as  he  caste  his  eye  asyde, 
Wher  that  ther  kneled  in  the  hye  weye 
A  companye  of  ladies,  tweye  and  tweye, 
Ech  after  other,  clad  in  clothes  blake  ; 
But  swich  a  cry  and  swich  a  wo  they  make 
That  in  this  world  nis  creature  livinge 
That  herde  swich  another  weymentinge, 
And  of  this  cry  they  wolde  never  stenten 
Til  they  the  reynes  of  his  bredel  henten." 

—  The  Knightes  Tale. 

"  A  theef  he  was,  for  sothe,  of  corn  and  mele, 
And  that  a  sly  and  usaunt  for  to  stele. 
His  name  was  hoten  deynous  Simkin. 
A  wyf  he  haclde  y-comen  of  noble  kin  ; 
The  person  of  the  toun  hir  fader  was. 
With  hir  he  yaf  ful  many  a  panne  of  bras, 
For  that  Simkin  sholde  in  his  blood  allye. 
She  was  y-fostred  in  a  nonnerye  ; 


CHAUCER  27 

For  Simkin  wolde  no  wyf,  as  he  sayde, 
But  she  were  wel  e-norissed  and  a  mayde, 
To  saven  his  estaat  and  yomanrye, 
And  she  was  proud  and  pert  as  is  a  pye." 

—  The  Reeves  Tale. 

"  At  Sarray,  in  the  land  of  Tartarye, 

Ther  dwelte  a  king  that  werreyed  Russye, 
Thurgh  which  ther  deyde  many  a  doughty  man. 
This  noble  king  was  cleped  Cambinskan, 
Which  in  his  tyme  was  of  so  greet  renoun 
That  ther  nas  no-wher  in  no  regioun 
So  excellent  a  lord  in  alle  thing  ; 
Him  lakked  noght  that  longeth  to  a  king. 
As  of  the  secte  of  which  that  he  was  born 
He  kept  his  lay,  to  which  that  he  was  sworn ; 
And  the-rto  he  was  hardy,  wys,  and  riche, 
And  pietous  and  just  alwey  y-liche  ; 
Sooth  of  his  word,  benigne,  and  honurable, 
Of  his  corage  as  any  centre  stable." 

—  The  Squieres  Tale. 

g.  Realism— Minuteness  — Single  Strokes — Viv- 
idness.— "  Other  fourteenth  century  writers  can  tell  a  story 
but  none  else  of  that  day  can  bring  the  actual  world 
of  men  and  women  before  us  with  the  movement  of  a  Floren- 
tine procession  picture,  and  with  a  color  and  a  truth  of  detail 
that  anticipate  the  great  Dutch  masters  of  painting."— 
T.  H.  Ward. 

"  When  Chaucer  describes  anything,  it  is  commonly  by  one 
of  those  simple  and  obvious  epithets  or  qualities  that  are  so  easy 
to  miss.  Is  it  a  woman  ?  He  tells  us  that  she  is  fresh  ;  that 
she  has  glad  eyes  ;  that  every  day  her  beauty  newed.  .  .  . 
Sometimes  he  describes  amply  by  the  merest  hint,  as  where 
the  Friar,  before  setting  himself  softly  down,  drives  away 
the  cat.  We  know  without  need  of  more  words  that  he  has 
chosen  the  snuggest  corner.  .  .  .  Nothing  escapes  his 
sure  eye  for  the  picturesque — the  cut  of  the  beard,  the  soil  of 


28  CHAUCER 

armor  on  the  buff  jerkin,  the  rust  on  the  sword,  the  expression 
of  the  eye.  .  .  .  Chaucer  is  the  first  to  break  away  from 
the  dreary  traditional  style  and  give  us  not  merely  stories,  but 
the  lively  pictures  of  real  life  as  the  ever  renewed  substance 
of  poetry.  .  .  .  His  parson  is  still  unmatched,  though 
Dryden  and  Goldsmith  have  both  tried  their  hands  on  him." 
— Lowell. 

"  Chaucer  excels  as  the  poet  of  manners  or  of  real  life. 
.  .  .  Chaucer  most  frequently  describes  things  as  they  are. 
.  .  .  The  characteristic  of  Chaucer  is  intensity.  .  .  . 
As  Spenser  was  the  most  romantic  and  visionary,  so  Chaucer 
was  the  most  practical  of  all  the  great  poets,  the  most  a  man 
of  business  and  the  world.  His  poetry  reads  like  history. 
Everything  has  a  downright  reality,  at  least  in  the  relator's 
mind.  A  simile  or  a  sentiment  is  as  if  it  were  given  in  upon 
evidence.  .  .  .  He  speaks  of  what  he  wishes  to  describe 
with  the  accuracy,  the  discrimination  of  one  who  relates  what 
has  happened  to  himself,  or  has  had  the  best  information  from 
those  who  have  been  eye-witnesses  of  it.  The  strokes  of  his 
pencil  always  tell.  He  dwells  only  on  the  essential,  on  that 
which  would  be  interesting  to  the  person  really  concerned  : 
yet,  as  he  never  omits  any  material  circumstance;  he  is  prolix 
from  the  number  of  points  on  which  he  touches,  without  being 
diffuse  on  any  one.  .  .  .  The  chain  of  his  story  is  com- 
posed of  a  number  of  fine  links,  closely  connected  together, 
and  riveted  by  a  single  blow." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  In  these  [the  characters  of  the  '  Canterbury  Tales']  his 
knowledge  of  the  world  availed  him  in  a  peculiar  degree,  and 
enabled  him  to  give  such  an  accurate  picture  of  ancient  man- 
ners as  no  contemporary  nation  has  transmitted  to  posterity. 
It  is  here  that  we  view  the  pursuits  and  employments,  the  cus- 
toms and  diversions  of  our  ancestors,  copied  from  the  life,  and 
represented  with  equal  truth  and  spirit,  by  a  judge  of  mankind 
whose  penetration  qualified  him  to  discern  their  foibles  or  dis- 
criminating peculiarities  and  by  an  artist  who  understood 


CHAUCER  29 

that  proper  selection  of  circumstances  and  those  predominant 
characteristics  which  form  a  finished  portrait." — Thomas 
Warton. 

"  The  '  Canterbury  Tales  '  are  as  real  as  anything  in  Shake- 
speare or  Burns.  .  .  .  The  prologue,  ...  in  which 
we  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  pilgrims,  is  the  ripest,  most 
genial  and  humorous — altogether  the  most  masterly  thing 
which  Chaucer  has  left  us.  In  its  own  way,  and  within  its 
own  limits,  it  is  the  most  wonderful  thing  in  the  language. 
The  people  we  read  about  are  as  real  as  the  people  we  brush 
clothes  with  in  the  street — nay,  much  more  real ;  for  we  not 
only  see  their  faces  and  the  fashion  and  texture  of  their  gar- 
ments, we  know  also  what  they  think,  how  they  express  them- 
selves, and  with  what  eyes  they  look  out  on  the  world.  Chau- 
cer's art  in  this  prologue  is  simple  perfection.  He  indulges 
in  no  irrelevant  description ;  he  airs  no  fine  sentiments  ;  he 
takes  no  special  pains  as  to  style  or  poetic  ornament ;  but  every 
careless  touch  tells,  every  sly  line  reveals  character ;  the  de- 
scription of  each  man's  horse-furniture  and  array  reads  like 
memoir. ' '  — Alexander  Smith. 

"  To  read  Chaucer  closely  is  really  to  live  for  the  moment 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  to  hear  the  talk  and  see  the  faces 
of  the  whole  people.  Shakespeare  never  did  so  much  for  his 
time.  He  gave  us  philosophy,  thoughts,  fancy,  dramatic 
action,  but  we  do  not  get  from  him  a  whole  century  alive 
again,  a  whole  nation  speaking  for  itself,  class  by  class,  the 
real  English  home-life ;  men  and  their  thoughts  at  once ; 
the  colors,  the  manners,  the  accents,  the  dress,  the  characters, 
the  sentiments,  the  science, — town,  field,  park  and  river 
scenery,  farm-house,  inn,  castle,  and  wharf,  all  brought  back 
to  us,  down  to  the  very  scent  of  them,  down  to  the  cat  driven 
from  the  best  seat,  the  pet  dog,  birds,  and  the  coals  on  the 
fire.  We  get  that  from  Chaucer.  .  .  .  His  characters  are 
splendidly  varied  and  true  to  nature." — H.  R.  Haweis. 


30  CHAUCER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Blak  was  his  herd,  and  manly  was  his  face. 
The  cercles  of  his  eyen  in  his  heed 
They  gloweden  bitwixe  yelow  and  reed, 
And  lyk  a  griffon  loked  he  aboute, 
With  kempe  heres  on  his  browes  stoute  ; 
His  limes  grete,  his  braunes  harde  and  stronge, 
His  shuldres  brode,  his  armes  rounde  and  longe. 
And  as  the  gyse  was  in  his  contree 
Ful  hye  up-on  a  char  of  gold  stood  he, 
With  foure  whyte  boles  in  the  trays. 
In-stede  of  cote-armure  over  his  harnays, 
With  nayles  yelwe  and  brighte  as  any  gold, 
He  hadde  a  beres  skin,  col-black,  for- old. 
His  longe  heer  was  kembd  bihinde  his  bak, 
As  any  ravenes  fether  it  shoon  for-blak." 

—  The  Knightes  Tale. 

"  This  wydwe,  of  which  I  telle  yow  my  tale, 
Sin  thilke  day  that  she  was  last  a  wyf, 
In  pacience  ladde  a  ful  simple  lyf, 
For  litel  was  hir  catel  and  hir  rente  ; 
For  housbondrye  of  such  as  God  hir  sente, 
She  fond  hir-self  and  eek  hir  doghtren  two. 
Three  large  sowes  hadde  she  and  namo, 
Three  kyn  and  eek  a  sheep  that  highte  Malle. 
Ful  sooty  was  hir  bour,  and  eek  hir  halle, 
In  which  she  eet  ful  many  a  sclendre  meel." 

—  The  Nonne  Preestes  Tale. 

"  A  garden  saw  I  full  of  blossmy  bowes, 
Upon  a  river,  in  a  grene  mede, 
Ther  as  that  swetnesse  evermore  ynow  is, 
With  floures  whyte,  blewe,  yelowe,  and  rede, 
And  colde  welle-stremes,  no-thing  dede, 
That  swommen  ful  of  smale  fisshes  lighte, 
With  finnes  rede  and  scales  silver-brighte." 

—  The  Parlement  of  Foules. 


CHAUCER  31 

fo.  Portrayal  of  Character. — "He  is  the  first  great 
"painter  of  character,  because  he  is  the  first  great  observer  of 
it  among  European  writers.  .  .  .  His  works  contain 
passages  displaying  a  penetrating  insight  into  the  minds  of 
men,  as  well  as  a  keen  eye  for  their  manners,  together  with 
a  power  of  generalizing,  which,  when  kept  within  due  bounds, 
lies  at  the  root  of  the  wise  knowledge  of  human  kind  so  ad- 
mirable to  us  in  our  great  essayists  from  Bacon  to  Addison 
and  his  modern  successors." — T.  H.  Ward. 

"  Quaint  as  they  [his  characters]  are,  they  are  the  very  quin- 
tessence of  human  nature.  They  live  yet,  fresh  and  vivid,  pas- 
sionate and  strong,  as  they  did  on  their  way  to  the  tomb  of  St. 
Thomas  upward  of  five  hundred  years  ago." —  William  Howitt. 

"  No  author  who  ever  existed  (Shakespeare  alone  except- 
ed)  seizes  more  powerfully  the  manners,  the  humors,  and  the 
sentiments  of  mankind,  or  delineates  them  more  vigorously. 
Every  point  which  has  relation  to  the  action  of 
the  human  mind  or  the  modifications  of  man  as  he  appears 
in  a  state  of  society,  is  treated  by  him  with  a  vividness 
and  energy  which  at  once  command  our  sympathy  and 
extort  our  astonishment.  .  .  .  His  personages  always 
feel,  and  we  confess  the  truth  of  their  feelings  ;  what  passes 
in  their  minds,  or  falls  from  their  tongues,  has  the  clear 
and  decisive  character  which  proclaims  it  human,  together 
with  the  vividness,  subtleness,  and  delicacy  which  few  au- 
thors in  the  most  enlightened  ages  have  been  equally  fortu- 
nate in  seizing." — William  Godwin. 

"  Above  all,  Chaucer  has  an  eye  for  character  that  seems 
to  have  caught  at  once  not  only  mental  and  physical 
features,  but  even  its  expression  in  variety  of  costume — an 
eye,  indeed,  second  only,  if  it  should  be  called  second  in 
some  respects,  to  that  of  Shakespeare.  I  know  of  nothing 
that  may  be  compared  to  the  prologue  to  the  '  Canterbury 
Tales,'  and  to  the  story  of  the  '  Canon's  Yeoman,'  before 
Chaucer.  But  it  is  in  his  characters,  especially,  that  his 


32  CHAUCER 

manner  is  large  and  free ;  for  he  is  painting  history,  though 
with  the  fidelity  of  a  portrait.  He  brings  out  strongly  the  es- 
sential traits,  characteristic  of  the  genus  rather  than  of  the  in- 
dividual. .  .  .  William  Blake  says,  '  The  characters  of 
Chaucer's  Pilgrims  are  the  characters  which  compose  all 
ages  and  all  nations.'  Some  of  the  names  and  titles  are 
altered  by  time,  but  the  characters  remain  forever  unal- 
tered, and  consequently  they  are  the  physiognomies  and  lin- 
eaments of  universal  human  life,  beyond  which  Nature  never 
steps.  ...  In  his  outside  accessories,  it  is  true,  he  is 
sometimes  as  minute  as  if  he  were  illuminating  a  missal. 
In  this  he  has  an  artistic  purpose.  It  is  here  that 
he  individualizes,  and  while  every  touch  harmonizes  with  and 
seems  to  complete  the  moral  features  of  the  character,  he  makes 
us  feel  that  we  are  among  living  men  and  not  the  abstracted 
images  of  men  .  .  .  Chaucer,  never  forgetting  the  es- 
sential sameness  of  human  nature,  makes  it  possible,  and  even 
probable,  that  his  motley  characters  should  meet  on  a  com- 
mon footing,  while  he  gives  to  each  the  expression  that  be- 
longs to  him,  the  result  of  special  circumstances  or  training. 
Indeed,  the  absence  of  any  suggestion  of  caste  cannot  fail  to 
strike  any  reader  familiar  with  the  literature  on  which  he  is 
supposed  to  have  formed  himself.  No  characters  are  at  once 
so  broadly  human  and  so  definitely  outlined  as  his.  Belong- 
ing, some  of  them,  to  extinct  types,  they  continue  contem- 
porary and  familiar  forever." — Lowell. 

"  The  readers  of  Chaucer's  poetry  feel  more  nearly  what 
the  persons  he  describes  must  have  felt  than  perhaps  those  of 
any  other  poet.  His  sentiments  are  not  voluntary  effusions 
of  the  poet's  fancy,  but  are  founded  on  the  natural  impulses 
and  habitual  prejudices  of  the  characters  he  has  to  represent. 
There  is  an  inveteracy  of  purpose,  a  sincerity  of  feeling, 
which  never  relaxes  or  grows  vapid,  in  whatever  they  do  or 
say.  .  .  .  The  picturesque  and  the  dramatic  are  in  him 
closely  blended  together  and  hardly  distinguishable ;  for  he 


CHAUCER  33 

principally  describes  external  appearances  as  indicating  char- 
acter, as  symbols  of  internal  sentiment.  There  is  a  meaning 
in  what  he  sees,  and  it  is  this  that  catches  his  eye  by 
sympathy.  .  .  .  [His  characters]  are  every  one  sam- 
ples of  a  kind,  abstract  definitions  of  a  species. 
Chaucer,  it  has  been  said,  numbered  the  classes  of  men  as 
Linnaeus  numbered  the  plants.  Most  of  them  remain  to 
this  day  ;  others  that  are  obsolete,  and  may  well  be  dis- 
pensed with,  still  live  in  his  description  of  them." — William 
Hazlitt. 

"To  a  certain  extent  Lowell  is  right  in  saying  that  there 
is  no  caste  feeling  among  Chaucer's  Pilgrims.  .  .  .  But 
we  should  greatly  misunderstand  the  delicacy  of  Chaucer's 
sense  of  manners  as  well  as  of  character  if  we  went  away 
with  the  impression  that  in  the  '  Canterbury  Tales '  there 
is  no  trace  of  the  distinctions  of  rank,  and  that  in  the  pil- 
grimage there  is  no  respect  paid  to  persons.  .  .  .  A  line 
is  drawn,  though  unobtrusively,  and  with  delicate  sugges- 
tive art,  between  the  '  gentles  '  and  the  other  pilgrims.  If 
this  had  not  been  done,  we  should  have  been  compelled  to 
say  that  our  poet  inaccurately  portrayed  the  life  of  the  times. 
But  he  has  done  it,  and  done  it  not  by  harsh,  angular,  forced 
assertion,  but  easily  and  naturally  in  his  clear-sighted  shaping 
and  working  out  of  his  materials.  .  .  .  If  we  fail  to  per- 
ceive this  contrast  between  the  serious  and  the  ludicrous  side 
of  the  Canterbury  pilgrimage,  if  we  miss  the  poet's  reconcil- 
iation of  the  two  without  repression  of  either,  Chaucer's  gen- 
ius, in  so  far  as  regards  manners  and  character,  has  labored 
for  us  in  vain." — William  Minto. 

"  He  does  more  [than  narrate].  He  observes  characters, 
notes  their  differences,  studies  the  coherence  of  their  parts,  en- 
deavors to  bring  forward  living  and  distinct  persons — a  thing 
unheard  of  in  his  time,  but  which  the  renovators  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  and  first  among  them  Shakespeare,  will  do 
afterwards.  .  .  .  For  the  first  time,  in  Chaucer,  character 
3 


34  CHAUCER 

stands  out  in  relief;  its  parts  are  held  together;  it  is  no  longer 
an  unsubstantial  phantom.  You  may  comprehend  its  past 
and  see  its  present  action.  Its  externals  manifest  the  personal 
and  incommunicable  details  of  its  inner  nature  and  the  infinite 
complexity  of  its  economy  and  motion.  To  this  day,  after 
four  centuries,  that  character  is  individualized  and  typical ;  it 
remains  distinct  in  our  memory,  like  the  creations  of  Shake- 
speare and  Rubens.  .  .  .  Chaucer  begins  with  the  por- 
trait of  all  his  narrators,  .  .  .  about  thirty  distinct  figures, 
of  every  sex,  condition,  age,  each  painted  with  his  disposition, 
age,  costume,  turns  of  speech,  little  significant  actions,  habits, 
antecedents,  each  maintained  in  his  character  by  his  talk  and 
subsequent  actions  so  well,  that  we  can  discern  here,  before 
any  other  notion,  the  germ  of  the  domestic  novel  as  we  write 
it  to-day." — Taine. 

"Chaucer  alone  comes  near  to  Shakespeare  in  that  supreme 
quality  of  the  dramatist  which  enables  him  to  show  the  char- 
acters of-  men  as  they  are  betrayed  by  themselves,  wholly 
developed  as  if  from  within,  not  as  described  from  without 
by  an  imperfect  and  prejudiced  observer.  .  .  .  The  pro- 
cession of  Chaucer's  Pilgrims  is  the  very  march  of  man  on  the 
high-road  of  life.  .  .  .  It  [the 'Canterbury  Tales']  is  the 
work  of  a  man  who  knew  the  manner  of  that  true  pilgrimage 
of  life,  against  which  the  stout-hearted  Wycliff  had  never 
preached . ' '  — Henry  Morley. 

"It  is  the  first  time  in  English  poetry  that  we  are  brought 
face  to  face,  not  with  characters  or  allegories  or  reminiscences 
of  the  past,  but  with  living  and  breathing  men,  men  distinct 
in  temper  and  sentiment  as  in  face  or  costume  or  mode  of 
speech ;  and  with  this  distinctness  of  each  maintained  through- 
out the  story  by  a  thousand  shades  of  expression  and  action.  It 
is  the  first  time,  too,  that  we  meet  with  the  dramatic  power 
which  not  only  creates  each  character  but  continues  it  with  its 
fellows,  which  not  only  adjusts  each  tale  or  jest  to  the  temper 
of  the  person  who  utters  it,  but  fuses  all  into  a  poetic  unity. 


CHAUCER  35 

It  is  life  in  its  largeness,  its  variety,  its  complexity  which  sur- 
rounds us  in  the  '  Canterbury  Tales.'  .  .  .  And  it  is  life 
that  he  loves — the  delicacy  of  its  sentiment,  the  breadth  of  its 
farce,  its  laughter  and  its  tears,  the  tenderness  of  its  Griseldis 
or  its  Smollett — like  adventures  of  the  millers  and  the  clerks. 
It  is  this  largeness  of  heart,  this  wide  tolerance,  which  enables 
him  to  reflect  man  for  us  as  none  but  Shakespeare  has  ever  re- 
flected him  and  to  do  this  with  a  pathos,  a  shrewd  sense  and 
kindly  humor,  a  freshness  and  joyousness  of  feeling,  that  even 
Shakespeare  has  not  surpassed." — -J.  JR.  Green. 

"  Chaucer's  perception  of  character  and  his  skill  in  deline- 
ating it  were  marvellous.  .  .  .  Chaucer's  characters  are 
more  than  portraits  of  classes :  they  are  people,  real,  live, 
individual." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Wei  loved  he  garleek,  oynons,  and  eek  lekes, 
And  for  to  drinken  strong  wyn,  reed  as  blood. 
Than  wolde  he  speke  and  crye  as  he  were  wood. 
And  whan  that  he  wej  dronken  hadde  the  wyn, 
Than  wolde  he  speke  no  word  but  Latyn. 
A  fewe  termes  hadde  he,  two  or  th-re, 
That  he  had  lerned  out  of  som  decree  ; 
No  wonder  is,  he  herde  it  al  the  day  ; 
And  eek  ye  knowen  well  how  that  a  jay 
Can  clepen  '  Watte '  as  well  as  can  the  pope. 
But  who-so  coude  in  other  thing  him  grope, 
Thanne  hadde  he  spent  al  his  philosophye  ; 
Ay,  '  Questio  quid  iurisj  wolde  he  crye. 
He  was  a  gentil  harlot  and  a  kinde  ; 
A  bettre  felawe  sholde  men  noght  finde." 

— Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

"Ther  was  also  a  Nonne,  a  Prioresse, 
That  of  hir  smyling  was  ful  simple  and  coy ; 
Hir  gretteste  ooth  was  but  by  seynt  Loy  ; 
And  she  was  cleped  madame  Eglentyne. 
Ful  wel  sche  song  the  service  divyne, 


36  CHAUCER 

Entuned  in  hir  nose  ful  semely  ; 
And  Frensh  she  spak  ful  faire  and  fetisly, 
After  the  scole  of  Stratford  atte  Bowe, 
For  Frensh  of  Paris  was  to  hir  unknowe. 
At  mete  wel  y-taught  was  she  with-alle  ; 
She  leet  no  morsel  from  hir  lippes  falle, 
Ne  wette  hir  fingres  in  hir  sauce  depe." 

— Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

"  Embrouded  was  he,  as  it  were  a  mede 
Al  ful  of  fresshe  floures  whyte  and  rede. 
Singinge  he  was  or  floytynge  al  the  day  ; 
He  was  as  fresh  as  is  the  month  of  May. 
Short  was  his  goune,  with  sieves  long  and  wyde. 
Wel  coude  he  sitte  on  hors  and  faire  ryde. 
He  coude  songes  make  and  wel  endyte, 
Juste  and  eek  daunce,  and  wel  purtreye  and  wryte. 
So  hote  he  lovede  that  by  nightertale 
He  sleep  namore  than  doth  a  nightergale. 
Curteys  he  was,  lowly,  and  servisable, 
And  carf  biforn  his  fader  at  the  table." 

— Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

m 

II.  Coarseness. — "It  is  very  misleading  to  apologize,  as 
some  writers  on  Chaucer  do,  for  the  gross  obscenity  of  certain 
of  the  tales,  on  the  ground  that  this  was  the  outspoken  fashion 
of  the  times — that  decorum  then  permitted  greater  freedom  of 
language.  The  savor  of  particular  words  may  have  changed 
since  the  time  of  Chaucer ;  but  then,  as  now,  people  with  any 
pretensions  to  refinement  were  bound  to  abstain  strictly  in  the 
presence  of  ladies  from  all  ribaldry  of  speech  and  manner,  on 
pain  of  being  classed  with  'churls'  and  'vileins.' 
And  in  the  'Canterbury  Tales'  Chaucer  carefully  guards  him- 
self against  being  supposed  to  be  ignorant  of  this  law.  The 
ribald  tales  are  introduced  as  being  the  humours  of  the  lower 
orders,  persons  ignorant  or  defiant  of  the  rules  of  refined  soci- 
ety, and,  moreover,  as  we  have  seen,  excited,  intoxicated,  out 
for  a  pilgrimage  as  riotous  as  our  pilgrimage  to  the  Derby. 


CHAUCER  37 

Such  riotous  mirth  was  very  far  indeed  from  being  the  fashion 
of  the  time  among  fashionable  people.  Mark  how  careful 
Chaucer  is  to  shield  himself  from  the  responsibility  of  it.  In 
the  Prologue  (line  725)  he  prays  his  readers  of  their  courtesy 
not  to  set  down  his  plainness  of  speech  as  his  *  vileinye.'  He 
is  bound  to  record  faithfully  every  thing  that  was  said,  though 
it  had  been  said  by  his  own  brother." — William  Minto. 

"In  spite  of  some  external  stains,  which  those  who  have 
studied  the  influence  of  manners  will  easily  account  for  with- 
out imputing  them  to  any  moral  depravity,  we  feel  that  we 
can  join  the  pure-minded  Spenser  in  calling  him  <  most  sacred, 
happy  spirit.'  " — Lowell. 

"  In  all  the  unfettered  invention  and  nudity  of  style,  there 
was  no  grossness  in  the  temper,  and  less  in  the  habits,  of  the 
poet.  He  addressed  his  own  age  as  contemporaries  were 
doing  in  France  and  Italy.  .  .  .  Our  poet  has  himself 
pleaded  that,  having  fixed  on  his  personage,  he  had  no  choice 
to  tell  any  other  tale  than  what  that  individual  would  himself 
have  told." — Isaac  D'  Israeli. 

Illustration  of  this  characteristic  is  evidently  uncalled  for 
here.  Those  who  wish,  may  find  representative  specimens  in 
"The  Somnours  Tale,"  lines  30  to  50  or  95  to  100. 


SPENSER,  i552(?)-i599 

Biographical  Outline. — Edmund  Spenser,  bom  in 
London  about  1552;  his  father  was  ''gentleman  by  birth," 
though  a  journeyman  weaver,  of  Lancashire  family ;  Spenser 
enters  the  newly  founded  Merchant  Taylors'  School,  probably 
in  1561,  being  one  of  "  certyn  poor  schollers  of  the  scholls 
aboute  London;  "  he  enters  Pembroke  Hall,  Cambridge,  as 
a  sizer  in  May,  1569 ;  during  the  same  year  was  published  a 
translation  of  certain  sonnets  of  du  Bellay,  ascribed  to  John 
Van  Der  Noodt,  but  doubtless  made  by  Spenser ;  all  the  son- 
nets were  published  in  1591  as  Spenser's  own  translation  ;  at 
Cambridge  he  wins  distinction  in  Greek,  Latin,  French,  and 
Italian,  and  becomes  a  close  student  of  Petrarch  and  Chaucer; 
as  an  undergraduate  he  suffers  from  poverty  and  ill-health  ; 
he  forms  close  friendships  with  Gabriel  Harvey  (Hobbinoll) 
and  Edward  Kirke;  in  1576  he  receives  from.  Cambridge  the 
degree  of  M.A.,  and  leaves  the  University;  he  spends  some 
time  with  kinsfolk  near  Hurstwood,  and  there  falls  in  love 
with  "  a  gentlewoman  of  no  mean  house,"  but  she  disdains 
him,  and  his  disappointment  is  recorded  in  "The  Shepheard's 
Calendar  "  (written  about  this  time  and  published  in  1591) 
and  also  in  "Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again,"  written  in 
1591  and  published  in  1595  ;  he  leaves  Hurstwood  for  Lon- 
don at  the  advice  of  Harvey,  who  was  in  favor  with  the  Earl 
of  Leicester,  and  as  early  as  1598  Spenser  becomes  a  member 
of  the  household  of  Leicester  House  (afterward  Essex  House) 
in  the  Strand  ;  he  writes  poems  for  the  amusement  of  Leices- 
ter, and  apparently  acts  as  his  agent  in  delivering  despatches 
to  Leicester's  correspondents  in  foreign  countries  ;  Spenser 
probab^ Visited  Ireland  in  1577,  and  is  known  to  have  been 

38 


SPENSER  39 

in  France  and  Spain  in  1579  ;  through  Leicester,  he  meets 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Leicester's  nephew,  and  they  become  inti- 
mate friends,  to  their  mutual  advantage ;  with  Sidney  and 
other  friends,  Spenser  forms  a  literary  club  called  the  Areop- 
agus, where  they  debate  the  application  of  the  classical  rules 
of  quantity  to  English  metres,  though  Spenser  confesses,  "I 
am  more  in  love  with  my  versifying." 

During  1579  and  1580  Spenser  wrote  several  poems,  which 
have  either  been  lost  or  have  been  incorporated  into  poems 
under  titles  different  from  those  given  them  by  Harvey  and 
Spenser ;  among  these  were  nine  English  comedies,  a  poem 
entitled  "  Dreams,"  which  Harvey  thought  equal  to  Pe- 
trarch's "Visions"  (this  was  actually  prepared  for  printing, 
with  a  glossary  and  illustrations) ;  "  The  Dying  Pelican  "  (also 
prepared  for  the  press),  and  a  prose  tract  entitled  "  The  Eng- 
lish Poet ;  ' '  some  of  these  last  poems  are  possibly  embodied 
in  part  in  the  "  Faery  Queen ;  "  while  Spenser  is  a  member 
of  Leicester's  household  he  also  writes  his  "  Hymns  in  Honor 
of  Love  and  Beauty  "  (published  in  1596),  and  begins  the 
"  Faerie  Queene  ;  "  "  The  Shepheard's  Calendar  "  was  pub- 
lished December  5,  1579,  with  a  dedication  to  Sidney,  and 
bearing  the  pseudonym  "  Immerito  ;  "  Spenser's  friend,  Kirke, 
supplied  notes  and  a  glossary ;  the  archaic  dialect  in  the 
"  Calendar  "  is  in  imitation  of  the  Doric  dialect  of  Theocri- 
tus, whose  pastoral  poetry  suggested  the  theme  to  Spenser  ; 
Colin  in  the  "Calendar"  is  Spenser,  and  Alguind  is  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury ;  the  "  Calendar"  was  received  with 
enthusiasm,  and  passed  through  five  editions  in  eighteen  years; 
it  was  translated  into  Latin  by  John  Dove  in  1585,  and  it 
gave  to  Spenser  at  once  the  first  place  among  living  English 
poets;  in  1580  he  published  two  volumes,  consisting  of  ex- 
tracts from  his  correspondence  with  Harvey  and  dealing  prin- 
cipally with  questions  of  English  scansion. 

In  July,  1580,  through  the  influence  of  Leicester  and  Sid- 
ney, Spenser  is  appointed  secretary  to  Lord  Grey,  then  just 


40  SPENSER 

appointed  Lord-deputy  to  Ireland;  he  reaches  Dublin  with 
Grey,  August  12,  1580,  and  remains  in  Ireland  till  the  close 
of  1598,  excepting  two  visits  to  England  in  1589-90  and 
1596;  he  accompanies  Lord  Grey  on  his  expedition  to  Kerry 
in  November,  1580  ;  as  secretary  to  Lord  Grey  he  transcribes 
many  official  documents,  some  of  which  are  still  extant ;  in 
1582  he  receives  ^"162  as  "  rewards  "  for  his  secretaryship; 
in  March,  1591,  he  is  appointed  clerk  to  the  Irish  Court  of' 
Chancery,  an  office  which  he  holds  for  several  years  ;  besides 
his  salary  he  receives  much  landed  property,  and  he  holds  a 
high  social  position  among  the  English  society  of  Dublin, 
although  Spenser  always  regarded  the  Irish  as  a  savage  nation  ; 
he  continues  "The  Faery  Queene,"  and  writes,  about  1586, 
his  elegy  on  "Astrophel"  (Sidney),  which  was  first  pub- 
lished with  "Colin  Clout"  in  1595;  in  June,  1598,  he 
resigns  his  clerkship  in  the  Dublin  Court  of  Chancery,  and 
buys  the  post  of  Clerk  of  the  Council  of  Munster  ;  when,  in 
1586,  the  property  of  the  earls  of  Desmond  in  Munster  was 
declared  forfeit  and  was  "planted"  with  English  colonists, 
Spenser  received  3,028  acres  ;  in  1588  he  settles  in  Kilcol- 
man  Castle,  on  his  Irish  estate,  Doneraile,  County  Cork, 
where  a  sister  acts  as  his  housekeeper ;  he  has  serious  trouble 
with  his  neighbors,  especially  one,  Viscount  Roche,  but 
derives  comfort  from  his  intercourse  with  another  neighbor, 
Sir  Walter  Ralegh,  whom  Spenser  had  doubtless  before  met 
in  London  and  who,  like  Spenser,  had  received  a  portion  of 
the  confiscated  Desmond  estate ;  Ralegh  visits  Spenser  at  Kil- 
colman,  and  is  shown  the  first  three  books  of  the  "  The  Faery 
Queene,"  which  he  praises  highly. 

In  October,  1589,  Spenser  goes  with  Ralegh  to  London, 
determined  to  publish  his  poems  and  to  seek  Elizabeth's 
favor;  he  publishes  the  first  three  books  of  the  "Faery 
Queene  "  in  1590  ;  although  the  poem  is  favorably  received, 
Spenser's  efforts  to  secure  more  congenial  occupation  than 
that  offered  by  his  Irish  clerkship  are  at  first  unsuccessful ; 


SPENSER  41 

while  in  London  he  writes  "  Daphnaida,"  an  elegy  on  Lady 
Douglass,  and  dedicates  it  to  the  Marchioness  of  Northamp- 
ton ;  it  is  published  at  once,  and  in  February,  1590-91,  the 
Queen  gives  to  Spenser  a  pension  of  ^50  a  year;  disap- 
pointed with  the  Tneagreness  of  the  pension,  he  soon  returns 
to  Kilcolman  Castle,  where  he  writes  ''Colin  Clout's  Come 
Home  Again,"  late  in  1591,  though  it  is  not  published  till 
1595  ;  in  1591  his  publisher  collected  some  of  Spenser's 
shorter  poems  and  published  them  under  the  title  of  "  Com- 
plaints," containing  "  Sundrie  small  Poems  of  the  World's 
Vanitie  ;  "  the  volume  included  "The  Ruines  of  Time," 
"  The  Teares  of  the  Muses,"  "  Virgil's  Gnat  "  (a  translation 
of  the  "  Culex  "  erroneously  ascribed  to  Virgil),  "Mother 
Hubberd's  Tale,"  "  The  Ruins  of  Rome  "  (translations  from 
du  Bellay),  "Muipatmos,"  "Visions  of  the  World's  Vanitie," 
Bellay's  "Visions,"  and  Petrerches  "Visions;"  most  of 
these  poems  were,  Spenser  said,  "long  rithems  composed  in 
the  raw  conceipt  of  my  youth  ;  "  owing  to  the  satire  on  Lord 
Burghley  contained  in  "  The  Ruines  of  Time"  and  that  on 
court  follies  and  vices  in  "  Mother  Hubberd's  Tale,"  both 
poems  were  "called  in;"  a  proposal  by  his  publisher  to 
issue  others  of  Spenser's  neglected  or  lost  pieces  was  not 
favorably  received. 

In  1592  he  falls  in  love  again — this  time  with  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  James  Boyle,  a  relative  of  Richard  Boyle  ;  Spen- 
ser's sonnets  called  "  Amoretti  "  are  really  a  diary  of  his 
courtship;  he  is  married  in  June,  1594,  probably  at  Cork, 
and  the  poet  celebrates  the  event  in  his  matchless  "  Epithala- 
mion  ;  "  meantime  his  Irish  neighbor,  Lord  Roche,  contin- 
ues his  litigation  against  Spenser,  and  in  February,  1594, 
wins  possession  of  a  part  of  the  poet's  estate  ;  during  the 
same  year,  and  perhaps  in  consequence,  Spenser  assigns  his 
clerkship  of  the  Munster  Council  ;  in  1595  Ponsonby,  Spen- 
ser's London  publisher,  issues  the  "  Amoretti  "  and  "  Epr- 
thalamion  "  and  also  "Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again," 


4?  SPENSER 

with  an  appendix  containing  "  Astrophel,"  Spenser's  elegy 
on  his  friend  Sidney;  Ponsonby  publishes  Books  IV.,  V., 
and  VI.  of  the  "Faery  Queene  "  early  in  1596,  with  alle- 
gorical illustrations,  and  binds  in  the  same  volume  a  second 
edition  of  the  first  three  books  ;  the  book' becomes  very  pop- 
ular, but  King  James  VI.,  of  Scotland,  complains  to  the  Eng- 
lish ambassador  concerning  reflections  on  his  mother,  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots,  and  urges  that  Spenser  be  punished  ;  he  is 
protected,  however,  by  friends  at  Court,  where  he  appears  in 
the  autumn  of  1596,  still  hoping  for  preferment;  while  at 
Greenwich,  in  September,  1596,  he  publishes  and  dedicates 
to  two  countesses  "Four  Hymnes,"  including  his  "Hymn 
in  Honor  of  Love  and  Beauty,"  written  long  before,  and  the 
new  hymns  on  "  Heavenly  Love"  and  "  Heavenly  Beauty." 
In  November,  1596,  while  a  guest  at  Essex  House,  Spenser 
writes  his  "  Prothalamion  "  in  honor  of  the  marriage  of  the 
two  daughters  of  his  host,  Edward  Somerset,  Earl  of  Worces- 
ter;  during  this  London  visit  of  1596  he  writes  also  his  prose 
pamphlet,  "  View  of  the  Present  State  of  Ireland,"  being 
based  on  his  impressions  of  "  these  late  wars  in  Mounster  " — a 
pamphlet  taking  an  extreme  and  most  uncharitable  view  of  all 
Irishmen,  whom  the  poet  thought  worthy  only  of  extermina- 
tion; Spenser  also  completes  a  work  on  the  antiquities  of 
Ireland,  which  has  been  entirely  lost;  early  in  1597  he  re- 
turns to  Ireland,  depressed  in  spirits  and  broken  in  health ; 
in  September,  1598,  he  is  made  Sheriff  of  Cork  ;  the  famous 
Tyrone  Rebellion  had  already  broken  out,  and  Spenser,  as 
Sheriff,  was  taken  unawares;  in  October,  1598,  the  rebels 
overran  all  Minister,  and  burned  Kilcolman  Castle  over  Spen- 
ser's head  ;  the  poet  fled  to  Cork  with  his  wife  and  four  chil- 
dren ;  Ben  Jonson  declares  that  one  of  Spenser's  children  per- 
ished in  the  flames;  at  Cork  he  draws  up  a  "  brief  note  of 
Ireland,"  in  which  he  appeals  to  Elizabeth  to  "show  unto 
these  vile  caitiffs"  the  terror  of  her  wrath;  in  December, 
1598,  Spenser  is  sent  by  the  President  of  Munster  to  London 


SPENSER  43 

• 

with  a  despatch  reporting  the  progress  of  the  rebellion  ;  he 
finds  a  lodging  at  an  "inn"  in  King  Street,  Westminster, 
where  he  dies,  January  16,  1598-99  ;  Ben  Jonson  and  other 
contemporary  writers  assert  that  he  died  "  for  lack  of  bread," 
but  this  is  hardly  credible  in  view  of  Spenser's  pension  and 
his  official-  position  as  bearer  of  a  message  to  the  Court;  he 
was  buried  by  friends  in  Westminster  Abbey  ;  according  to 
Cowden  his  hearse  was  ''attended  by  poets,  and  mournful 
elegies  and  poems,  with  the  pens  that  wrote  them,  were 
thrown  into  his  tomb." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   CRITICISM   ON   SPENSER. 

Hazlitt,   Wm.,  "  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,    i88.j,   G. 

Bell  &  Co.,  45-58. 
Saintsbury,  G.,   "  Elizabethan   Literature."     London,  1887,    Macmillan, 

82-97. 
Lowell,    J.    R.,    "Works."     Boston,    1891,    Houghton,    Mifflin  &  Co., 

4:265-354. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  "  Lives  of  Famous  Poets."    London,  1878,  E.  Moxon, 

21-34- 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth."      Boston,  1884, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  189-221. 
Taine,    H.    A,    "History  of  English   Literature."     New   York,    1875, 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  I  :  194-226. 
Dowden,  E.,  "  Transcripts  and  Studies."     London,  1888,    Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  269-337. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  "  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays."     Philadelphia, 

Carey  &  Hart,  1 :  65-80. 

Church,  R.  W.,  "Spenser."     London,  1888,  Macmillan,  v.  index. 
Minto,   W.,    "Characteristics   of    English   Poets."      Edinburgh,    1874, 

Blackwood,  213-238. 
Ward,  T.    H.,    "English  Poets."      London,  1881,    Macmillan,  1:275- 

284. 
Morley,    Henry,    "  English    Writers."     London,   1892,  Cassell  &  Co., 

9:314-415  and  437-451- 
Collier,    W.    F.,    "  History   of    English    Literature."     London,     1892, 

Nelson,  120-128. 
DeVere,  A.,  "  Essays,  Chiefly  on  Poetry."     London,  1887,  Macmillan, 

I-IOO. 


44  SPENSER 

Howitt,  Wm.,  "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,  1863, 

Routledge,  10-29. 
Reed,  Henry,  "British  Poets."     Philadelphia,  1857,  Parry  &  Macmillan, 

i:  113-149- 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893. 

Harper,  I  :  127-171. 

Black-wood's  Magazine,  34  :  824-857  (Professor  Wilson). 
Andover  Review,  12:  372-385,  and  12:372-385,  H.  S.  Pancoast. 
Edinburgh  Review,  7:  203-217  (Sir  Walter  Scott). 
Poet  Lore,  I  :  214-223  (Stopford  Brooke). 
North  American  Review,  I2O  :  334-394  (J.  R.  Lowell). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  21:395-405  (E.  P.  Whipple). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

i.  Rich  Imagination — Idealism. — Lamb  has  fitly 
bestowed  upon  Spenser  the  title  of  "the  poet's  poet,"  and 
Scott  declares  that,  from  Cowley  downward,  every  youth  of 
imagination  has  been  enchanted  with  the  splendid  legends  of 
the  "  Faery  Queene."  Milton  directly  acknowledges  him  as 
his  master. 

"In  the  world  into  which  Spenser  carries  us,  there  is 
neither  time  nor  space,  or  rather  it  is  outside  of  and  inde- 
pendent of  them  both,  and  so  is  purely  ideal,  or,  more 
truly,  imaginary ;  yet  it  is  full  of  form,  color,  and  all  earthly 
luxury,  and  so  far  if  not  real  yet  apprehensible  by  the  senses. 
He  was  not  long  in  choosing  between  an  unreality 
which  pretended  to  be  real  and  those  everlasting  realities  of 
the  mind  which  seem  unreal  only  because  they  lie  beyond 
the  horizon  of  the  every-day  world  and  become  visible  only 
when  the  mirage  of  fancy  lifts  them  up  and  hangs  them  in 
an  ideal  atmosphere.  ...  I  have  called  the  world  to 
which  Spenser  transports  us  a  world  of  unreality.  I  have 
wronged  him.  It  is  from  pots  and  pans  and  stocks  and  futile 
gossip  and  inch-long  politics  that  he  emancipates  us,  and 
makes  us  free  of  that  to-morrow,  always  coming  and  never 
come,  where  ideas  shall  reign  supreme.  He  lifts  everything, 


SPENSER  45 

not  beyond  recognition,  but  to  an  ideal  distance,  where  no 
mortal,  I  had  almost  said  human,  speck  is  visible.  Instead 
of  the  ordinary  bridal  gifts,  he  hallows  his  wife  with  an 
Epithalamion  fit  for  a  conscious  goddess.  .  .  .  His 
fancy,  habitually  moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized,  un- 
realizes  everything  at  a  touch.  .  .  .  The  language  and 
verse  of  Spenser  at  his  best  have  an  ideal  lift  in  them,  and 
there  is  scarcely  any  of  our  poets  who  can  so  hardly  help  be- 
ing poetical.  ...  He  who,  when  his  singing  robes  were 
on,  could  never  be  tempted  nearer  to  the  real  world  than 
under  some  subterfuge  of  pastoral  or  allegory.  ...  It 
is  evident  that  to  him  the  Land  of  Faery  was  an  unreal  world 
of  picture  and  illusion,  in  which  he  could  shut  himself  up 
from  the  actual,  with  its  shortcomings  and  failures.  .  .  . 
['  The  Faery  Queene '  is]  full  of  life  and  light  and  the  other  - 
wcrldliness  of  poetry.  .  .  .  This  place,  somewhere  be- 
tween mind  and  matter,  between  soul  and  sense,  between  the 
actual  and  the  possible,  is  precisely  the  region  which  Spenser 
assigns  to  the  poetic  sensibility  of  impression.  .  .  .  His 
fancy,  habitually  moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized,  un- 
realizes  everything  at  a  touch.  .  .  .  Other  poets  have 
held  their  mirrors  up  to  nature,  mirrors  that  differ  very  widely 
in  the  truth  and  beauty  of  the  images  they  reflect ;  but 
Spenser's  is  a  magic  glass,  in  which  we  see  few  shadows  cast 
back  from  actual  life,  but  visionary  shapes  conjured  up  by 
the  wizard's  art  from  some  confusedly  remembered  past  or 
some  impossible  future;  it  is  like  one  of  those  still  pools  of 
mediaeval  legend  which  covers  some  sunken  city  of  the  antique 
world  ;  a  reservoir  in  which  all  our  dreams  seem  to  have  been 
gathered.  As  we  float  upon  it,  we  see  that  it  pictures  faithfully 
enough  the  summer  clouds  that  drift  over  it,  the  trees  that 
grow  about  its  margin,  but  in  the  midst  of  these  shadowy 
echoes  of  actuality  we  catch  faint  tones  of  bells  that  seem  blown 
to  us  from  beyond  the  horizon  of  time,  and  looking  down  into 
the  clear  depths,  catch  glimpses  of  towers  and  far -shining 


46  SPENSER 

knights  and  peerless  dames  that  waver  and  are  gone.  Is  it  a 
world  that  ever  was,  or  shall  be,  or  can  be,  or  but  a  delu- 
sion ?  Spenser's  world,  real  to  him,  is  real  enough  for  us  to 
take  a  holiday  in,  and  we  may  well  be  content  with  it  when 
the  earth  we  dwell  on  is  often  too  real  to  allow  of  such  vaca- 
tions. It  is  the  same  kind  of  world  that  Petrarca's  Laura 
has  walked  in  for  five  centuries  with  all  ears  listening  for  the 
music  of  her  footfall.  .  .  .  He  is  a  standing  protest 
against  the  tyranny  of  the  commonplace,  and  sows  the  seeds 
of  a  noble  discontent  with  prosaic  views  of  life  and  the  dull 
uses  to  which  it  may  be  put."  — Lowell. 

"  He  began  to  believe,  with  more  than  the  usual  faith  of 
the  poet,  in  the  beautiful  or  terrible  or  fantastic  shapes  with 
which  his  fancy  was  peopled.  .  .  .  And  it  was  this 
wonderful  and  various  troop  of  ideal  shapes,  palpable  to  his 
own  eye  and  domesticated  to  his  own  heart,  that  he  sent 
forth  in  an  endless  succession  of  pictures  through  the  magical 
pages  of  the  '  Faery  Queene.'  .  .  .  The  inwardness  of 
Spenser's  genius,  the  constant  reference  of  his  creative  faculty 
to  internal  ideals  rather  than  to  objective  facts,  has  given  his 
poem  a  special  character  of  remoteness.  .  .  .  K is  cheer- 
fulness has  no  connection  with  mirth,  but  springs  from  his 
perception  of  an  ideal  life,  which  has  become  a  reality  to  his 
heart  and  imagination." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  In  Spenser,  we  wander  in  another  world  among  ideal  be- 
ings. The  poet  takes  and  lays  us  in  the  lap  of  a  lovelier 
nature,  by  the  sound  of  softer  streams,  among  greener  hills 
and  fairer  valleys.  He  paints  nature,  not  as  we  find  it,  but 
as  we  expected  to  find  it,  and  fulfils  the  delightful  promise  of 
our  youth.  He  waves  the  wand  of  enchantment,  and  at  once 
embodies  airy  beings  and  throws  a  delicious  veil  over  all 
actual  objects.  The  two  worlds  of  reality  and  of  fiction  are 
poised  on  the  wings  of  his  imagination." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  Spenser's  power  of  taking  up  real  objects,  persons,  and 
incidents,  of  plunging  these  in  some  solvent  of  the  imagina- 


SPENSER  47 

tion,  and  then  of  recreating  them — the  same  and  not  the 
same — is  manifest  throughout.  Everything  has  been  sub- 
mitted to  the  shaping  power  of  the  imagination  ;  everything 
has  been  idealized  ;  yet  Spenser  does  not  remove  from  real 
life,  does  not  forsake  his  own  country  and  his  own  time. 
The  mere  visible  shows  of  Spenser's  poem  are  in- 
deed goodly  enough  to  beguile  a  summer's  day  in  some  old 
wood  and  to  hold  us  from  morning  to  evening  in  a  waking 
dream. " — Edward  Dowden. 

"  He  was  pre-eminently  a  creator  and  a  dreamer,  and  that 
most  naturally,  instinctively,  unceasingly.  .  .  .  This 
fount  of  living  and  changing  forms  is  inexhaustible  in  Spen- 
ser ;  he  is  always  imaging  ;  it  is  his  specialty.  He  has  but 
to  close  his  eyes  and  apparitions  arise ;  they  abound  in  him, 
crowd,  overflow;  in  vain  he  pours  them  forth;  they  con- 
tinually float  up,  more  copious  and  more  dense.  .  .  .  To 
unfold  these  epic  faculties  and  to  display  them  in  the  sub- 
lime region  where  his  soul  is  naturally  at  home,  he  requires 
an  ideal  stage,  situated  beyond  the  bounds  of  reality,  with 
personages  who  could  hardly  exist,  and  in  a  world  which 
could  never  be.  .  .  .  Magic  is  the  mould  of  his  mind, 
and  impresses  its  shape  upon  all  that  he  imagines  or  thiftks. 
Involuntarily  he  robs  objects  of  their  ordinary  form.  If  he 
looks  at  a  landscape,  after  an  instant  he  sees  it  quite  differ- 
ently. He  carries  it,  unconsciously,  into  an  enchanted 
land  ;  the  azure  heaven  sparkles  like  a  canopy  of  diamonds, 
meadows  are  clothed  with  flowers,  a  biped  population  flutters 
in  the  balmy  air,  palaces  of  jasper  shine  among  the  trees, 
radiant  ladies  appear,  carved  balconies  above  galleries  of 
emerald.  This  unconscious  toil  of  mind  is  like  the  slow 
crystallizations  of  nature.  A  moist  twig  is  cast  into  the 
bottom  of  a  mine,  and  is  brought  out  again  a  hoop  of  dia- 
monds. .  .  .  He  leads  us  to  the  summit  of  fairy-land, 
soaring  above  history,  on  that  extreme  verge  where  objects 
vanish  and  pure  idealism  begins.  .  .  .  We  perceive 


48  SPENSER 

that  his  characters  are  not  flesh  and  blood,  and  that  all  these 
brilliant  phantoms  are  phantoms  and  nothing  more.  We 
take  pleasure  in  their  brilliancy  without  believing  in  their 
substantiality  ;  we  are  interested  in  their  doings  without  troub- 
ling ourselves  about  their  misfortunes.  We  know  that  their 
tears  and  cries  are  not  real.  Our  emotion  is  purified  and 
raised.  We  do  not  fall  into  gross  illusions  ;  we  have  that 
gentle  feeling  of  knowing  ourselves  to  be  dreaming.  We, 
like  him,  are  a  thousand  leagues  from  actual  life,  beyond  the 
pangs  of  painful  pity,  unmixed  terror,  violent  and  bitter 
hatred.  We  entertain  only  refined  sentiments,  partly 
formed,  arrested  at  the  very  moment  they  were  about  to  af- 
fect us  with  too  sharp  a  stroke.  .  .  .  He  is  not  yet 
settled  and  shut  in  by  that  species  of  exact  common-sense 
which  was  to  bound  and  cramp  the  whole  modern  civiliza- 
tion. In  his  heart  he  inhabits  the  poetic  and  shadowy  land 
from  which  men  were  daily  drawing  further  and  further 
away.  ...  He  enters  straightway  upon  the  strangest 
dreams  of  the  old  story-tellers  without  astonishment,  like  a 
man  who  has  still  stranger  dreams  of  his  own.  Enchanted 
castles,  monsters  and  giants,  duels  in  the  woods,  wandering 
ladies,  all  spring  up  under  his  hands,  the  mediaeval  fancy  with 
the  mediaeval  generosity,  and  it  is  just  because  the  world  is 
unreal  that  it  so  suits  his  humour.  Imagination  was  never 
more  prodigal  or  inventive." — Tame. 

"To  the  last  it  [his  genius]  moved  in  a  world  which  was 
not  real,  which  never  had  existed,  which,  anyhow,  was  only 
a  world  of  memory  and  sentiment.  He  never  threw  himself 
frankly  upon  human  life  as  it  is ;  he  always  viewed  it  through 
a  veil  of  mist  which  greatly  altered  its  true  colours,  and  often 
distorted  its  proportions.  .  .  .  The  spell  is  to  be  found 
in  the  quaint  stateliness  of  Spenser's  imaginary  world  and  its 
representatives.  .  .  .  The  conventional  supposition  was 
that  at  the  Court,  though  everyone  knew  better,  all  was  per- 
petual sunshine,  perpetual  holiday,  perpetual  triumph,  per- 


SPENSER  49 

petual  love-making.  It  was  the  happy  reign  of  the  good  and 
wise  and  lovely.  It  was  the  discomfiture  of  the  base,  the 
faithless,  the  wicked,  the  traitorous.  This  is  what  is  reflected 
in  Spenser's  poem :  at  once,  its  stateliness  (for  there  was  no 
want  of  grandeur  and  magnificence  in  the  public  scene  ever 
before  Spenser's  imagination)  and  its  quaintness,  because  the 
whole  outward  apparatus  of  representation  was  borrowed 
from  what  was  past,  or  from  what  did  not  exist,  and  implied 
surrounding  circumstances  in  ludicrous  contrast  with  fact." 
— £.  W.  Church. 

"To  judge  from  internal  evidence,  no  man  ever  lived 
more  exclusively  in  and  for  poetry  than  Spenser.  We  try 
in  vain  for  any  term  to  express  the  voluptuous  complete- 
ness of  his  immersion  in  the  colours  and  music  of  poetry.  He 
was  a  man  of  reserved  and  gentle  disposition,  and  he  turned 
luxuriously  from  the  rough  world  of  facts  to  the  ampler  ether, 
the  diviner  air,  the  softer  and  more  resplendent  forms  of 
Arcadia  and  the  delightful  land  of  Faery.  While  the  drama- 
tists were  laboring  to  make  the  past  present,  his  imagination 
worked  in  an  opposite  line:  his  effort  was  to  remove  hard, 
clear,  visible,  and  tangible  actualities  to  dreamy  regions  and 
there  to  reproduce  them  in  a  glorified  state  with  softer  and 
warmer  forms  and  colours.  .  .  .  His  own  Pastoral  land  and 
Faery  land  he  had  furnished  with  a  geography,  a  population, 
and  a  history  of  their  own,  and  there  chiefly  his  imagination 
loved  to  dwell  and  pursue  its  creative  work." — William  Minto. 

"  Spenser  is  the  farthest  removed  from  the  ordinary  cares 
and  haunts  of  the  world  of  all  the  poets  that  ever  wrote  except, 
perhaps,  Ovid ;  and  this,  which  is  the  reason  why-  men  of 
business  and  the  world  do  not  like  him,  constitutes  his  most 
bewitching  charm  with  the  poetical.  .  .  .  The  poetic 
faculty  is  so  abundantly  and  beautifully  predominant  in  him 
above  every  other  .  .  .  that  he  has  always  been  felt  by 
his  countrymen  to  be  what  Charles  Lamb  called  him,  '  the 
poet's  poet.'  " — Leigh  Hunt. 
4 


50  SPENSER 

"  If  they  [readers]  want  poetry,  if  they  want  to  be  trans- 
lated' from  a  world  which  is  not  one  of  beauty  into  a  world 
where  the  very  uglinesses  are  beautiful,  into  a  world  of  per- 
fect harmony  in  color  and  sound,  of  an  endless  sequence  of 
engaging  event  and  character,  of  noble  passions  and  actions 
not  lacking  in  their  due  contrast,  then  let  them  go  to  Spenser 
with  a  certainty  of  satisfaction." — George  Saintsbury. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Bring  with  you  all  the  Nymphs  that  you  can  heare 

Both  of  the  rivers  and  the  forrests  greene 
And  of  the  sea  that  neighbours  to  her  neare  : 

Al  with  gay  girlands  goodly  wel  beseene. 
And  let  them  also  with  them  bring  in  hand 

Another  gay  girland, 
For  my  fayre  love  of  lillyes  and  of  roses. 

And  let  the  ground  whereas  her  foot  shall  tread 
For  feare  the  stones  her  tender  foot  should  wrong, 
Be  strewed  with  fragrant  flowers  all  along, 
And  diapred  lyke  the  discolored  mead." 

— Epithalamion. 

"  Of  fayre  Elisa  [Elizabeth]  be  your  silver  song, 

That  blessed  wight. 
The  flowre  of  virgins  ;  may  shee  flourish  long 

In  princely  plight ! 

For  shee  is  Syrinx  daughter  without  spotte, 
Which  Pan,  the  shepheard's  God,  of  her  begot  : 

So  sprong  her  grace 

Of  heavenly  race, 
No  mortall  blemishe  may  her  blotte. 

"  See,  where  she  sits  upon  the  grassie  greene, 

(O  seemely  sight  !) 

Yclad  in  scarlot,  like  a  mayden  Queen, 
And  ermines  white : 


SPENSER  51 

Upon  her  head  a  Cremosin  coronet, 
With  damask  roses  and  daffodillies  set ; 

Bay  leaves  betweene, 

And  primroses  greene, 
Embellish  the  sweete  violete." 

—  The  Shepheards  Calendar. 

"  A  satyre's  sonne,  yborne  in  forrest  wyld, 

By  straunge  adventure  as  it  did  betyde, 
And  there  begotten  of  a  lady  myld, 

Fayre  Thyamis,  the  daughter  of  Labryde  ; 
That  was  in  sacred  bandes  of  wedlocke  tyde 

To  Therion,  a  loose,  unruly  swayne, 
Who  had  more  joy  to  raunge  the  forrest  wyde, 

And  chase  the  salvage  beast  with  busie  payne, 
Then  serve  his  ladies  love,  and  waste  in  pleasures  vayne." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

2.  Incongruity — Artificiality. — Spenser  has  been  gen- 
erally criticised  for  allowing  the  "  mystic  enthusiasm  "  of  his 
genius  to  carry  him  into  frequent  inconsistencies.  Campbell 
calls  his  shepherds  "parsons  in  disguise,  who  converse  about 
heathen  divinities  and  points  of  Christian  theology." 

"  Spenser's  design  was  too  large  and  complicated  for  his 
imagination  to  grasp  as  a  whole.  It  was  the  necessary  condition 
of  a  poem  thus  sociably  blending  Christian  and  Pagan  beliefs, 
Platonic  ideas  and  barbaric  superstitions,  that  its  action  should 
occur  in  what  Coleridge  happily  calls  mental  space.  Truth 
of  scenery,  truth  of  climate,  truth  of  locality,  truth  of  costume, 
could  have  no  binding  authority  in  the  everywhere  and  no- 
where of  fairy  land.  .  .  .  It  is  objected,  for  example, 
that,  in  his  enumeration  of  the  trees  in  one  of  his  forests,  he 
associates  trees  which  in  nature  do  not  coexist ;  but  his  forest 
is  fairy  land.  The  form  of  Spenser's  '  Shepherd's  Calen- 
dar '  is  absurdly  artificial,  if  looked  at  merely  from  the  out- 
side, but  that  is  not,  perhaps,  the  wisest  way  to  look  at  any- 
thing, except  a  jail.  .  .  .  The  spirit  of  it  is  fresh  and 
original.  .  .  .  There  is  something  fairly  ludicrous  in 


52  SPENSER 

such  a  duality  as  that  of  Prince  Arthur  and  the  Earl  of  Leices- 
ter, Arthegall  and  Lord  Gray,  and  Belphcebe  and  Eliza- 
beth. The  reality  seems  to  heighten  the  improbability,  already 
hard  enough  to  manage.  ...  To  reign  in  the  air  was 
certainly  Spenser's  function,  .  .  .  but  being  too  poetical 
is  the  rarest  fault  of  poets.  .  .  .  What  practical  man 
ever  left  such  an  heirloom  to  his  countryman  as  the  '  Faery 
Queene?  '  .  .  .  The  bent  of  his  mind  was  toward  a  Pla- 
tonic mysticism." — Lowell. 

"  Here  and  there,  amid  armor  and  passages  of  arms,  he 
distributes  satyrs,  nymphs,  Diana,  Venus,  like  Greek  statues 
amid  the  turrets  and  lofty  trees  of  an  English  park.  There  is 
nothing  forced  in  the  union ;  the  ideal  epic,  like  a  superior 
heaven,  receives  and  harmonizes  the  two  worlds ;  a  beautiful 
pagan  dream  carries  on  a  beautiful  dream  of  chivalry ;  the 
link  consists  in  the  fact  that  they  are  both  beautiful.  At  this 
elevation  the  poet  has  ceased  to  observe  the  differences  of 
races  and  civilizations.  He  can  introduce  into  his  picture 
whatever  he  will ;  his  only  reason  is,  '  That  suited  ;  '  and 
there  could  be  no  better.  Under  the  glossy-leaved  oaks,  by 
the  old  trunk  so  deeply  rooted  in  the  ground,  he  can  see  two 
knights  cleaving  each  other  and  the  next  instant  a  company 
of  Fauns,  who  come  there  to  dance.  The  beams  of  light 
which  have  poured  down  upon  the  velvet  moss  can  reveal  the 
dishevelled  locks  and  white  shoulders  of  nymphs.  Do  we  not 
see  it  in  Rubens  ?  And  what  signify  discrepancies  in  the 
happy  and  sublime  illusions  of  fancy  ?  Are  there  more  dis- 
crepancies ?  Who  perceives  them  ?  Who  feels  them  ?  Who 
does  not  feel,  on  the  contrary,  that,  to  speak  the  truth,  there 
is  but  one  world,  that  of  Plato  and  the  poets;  that  actual 
phenomena  are  but  outlines  —  mutilated,  incomplete,  and 
blurred  outlines — wretched  abortions  scattered  here  and  there 
on  Time's  track,  like  fragments  of  clay,  half  moulded,  then 
cast  aside,  lying  in  an  artist's  studio  ;  that,  after  all,  invisible 
forces  and  ideas,  which  forever  renew  the  actual  existences, 


SPENSER  53 

attain  their  fulfilment  only  in  imaginary  existences ;  and  that 
the  poet,  in  order  to  express  nature  in  its  entirety,  is  obliged 
to  embrace  in  his  sympathy  all  the  ideal  forms  by  which 
nature  reveals  itself?  ...  In  fact,  there  are  six  poems, 
each  of  a  dozen  cantos,  in  which  the  action  is  ever  diverging 
and  converging  again,  becoming  confused  and  starting  again ; 
and  all  these  imaginings  of  antiquity  and  of  the  Middle  Ages 
are,  I  believe,  combined  in  it.  The  knight  *  pricks  along  the 
plaine,'  among  the  trees,  and  at  a  crossing  of  the  paths  meets 
other  knights  with  whom  he  engages  in  combat ;  suddenly, 
from  within  a  cave,  appears  a  monster,  half  woman  and  half 
serpent,  surrounded  by  a  hideous  offspring;  further  on,  a  giant 
with  three  bodies ;  then  a  dragon,  great  as  a  hill,  with  sharp 
talons  and  vast  wings.  For  three  days  he  fights  him,  and, 
twice  overthrown,  he  comes  to  himself  only  by  aid  of  '  a 
gracious  ointment. '  After  that  there  are  savage  tribes  to  be 
conquered,  castles  surrounded  by  flames  to  be  taken.  Mean- 
while ladies  are  wandering  in  the  midst  of  forests  on  white 
palfreys,  exposed  to  the  assaults  of  miscreants,  now  guarded 
by  a  lion  which  follows  them.  Magicians  work  manifold 
charms;  palaces  display  their  festivities;  tilt-yards  provide 
endless  tournaments;  sea-gods,  nymphs,  fairies,  kings  inter- 
mingle in  these  feasts,  surprises,  dangers." — Taine. 

"  His  own  errors  are  the  confusion  and  inconsistency  ad- 
mitted in  the  stories  and  allegorical  personages  of  the  ancients 
and  the  absurd  mixture  of  Christian  and  heathenish  allusions." 
— Thomas  Chalmers. 

"  To  the  last  it  [his  genius]  allied  itself  in  form,  at  least, 
with  the  artificial.  ...  A  fantastic  basis,  varying  ac- 
cording to  the  conventions  of  the  fashion,  was  held  essential 
for  the  representation  of  the  ideal.  ...  A  masquerade 
was  necessary.  .  .  .  Spenser  submitted  to  this  fashion 
from  first  to  last.  When  first  he  ventured  on  a  considerable 
poetic  enterprise,  he  spoke  his  thoughts,  not  in  his  own  name, 
nor  as  his  contemporaries  ten  years  later  did,  through  the 


54  SPENSER 

mouth  of  characters  in  a  tragic  or  comic  drama,  but  through 
imaginary  rustics,  to  whom  everyone  else  in  the  world  was  a 
rustic,  and  lived  among  the  sheep-folds,  with  a  background 
of  downs  or  vales  or  fields  and  the  open  sky  above.  .  .  . 
At  first  acquaintance,  the  '  Faery  Queene  '  to  many  of  us  has 
been  disappointing.  It  has  seemed  not  only  antique  but  ar- 
tificial. It  has  seemed  fantastic.  It  has  seemed,  we  cannot 
help  avowing,  tiresome.  It  is  not  till  the  early  appearances 
have  worn  off  and  we  have  learned  to  make  many  allowances 
and  to  surrender  ourselves  to  the  feelings  and  the  standards 
by  which  it  claims  to  affect  and  govern  us  that  we  really  find 
under  what  noble  guidance  we  are  proceeding  and  what  subtle 
and  varied  spells  are  ever  around  us.  .  .  .  It  seems  to 
us  odd  that  peaceful  sheep-cotes  and  love-sick  swains  should 
stand  for  the  world  of  the  Tudors  and  Guises,  or  that  its  cun- 
ning statecraft  and  relentless  cruelty  should  be  represented  by 
the  generous  follies  of  an  imaginary  chivalry.  But  it  was  the 
fashion  which  Spenser  found,  and  he  accepted  it.  ... 
Strong  in  the  abundant  but  unsifted  learning  of  his  day,  a 
style  of  learning  which,  in  his  case,  was  strangely  inaccurate, 
he  not  only  mixed  the  past  with  the  present,  fairy-land  with 
politics,  mythology  with  the  most  serious  Christian  ideas,  but 
he  often  mixed  together  the  very  features  which  are  most  dis- 
cordant in  the  colors,  forms,  and  methods  by  which  he  sought 
to  produce  the  effect  of  his  pictures.  .  .  .  There  is  a 
majestic  unconsciousness  of  all  violations  of  probability  and 
of  the  strangeness  of  the  combinations  which  it  unrolls  before 
us.  ...  The  perpetual  love-making,  as  one  of  the  first 
duties  and  necessities  of  a  noble  life,  the  space  which  it  must 
fill  in  the  cares  and  thoughts  of  all  gentle  and  high-reaching 
spirits,  ...  all  this  is  so  far  apart  from  what  we  know 
of  actual  life,  the  life  not  merely  of  work  and  business  but  the 
life  of  affection  and  even  of  passion,  that  it  makes  the  picture 
of  which  it  is  so  necessary  a  part  seem  to  us  in  the  last  degree 
unreal,  unimaginable,  grotesquely  ridiculous.  ...  It  is, 


SPENSER  55 

of  course,  a  purely  artificial  reading  of  the  facts  of  human  life 
and  feeling.  This  all-absorbing,  all-embracing  passion  of  love, 
at  least  this  way  of  talking  about  it,  was  the  fashion  of  the 
Court.  Further,  it  was  the  fashion  of  poetry,  which  he  in- 
herited ;  and  he  was  not  the  man  to  break  through  the  strong 
bounds  of  custom  and  authority.  He  took  what  he  found  ; 
what  was  his  own  was  his  treatment  of  it.  He  did  not  trouble 
himself  with  inconsistencies  or  see  absurdities  and  incongru- 
ities."—J?.  W.  Church. 

"  Shepherds  in  real  life  do  not  sit  in  the  shade  playing  on 
pan-pipes,  improvising  songs  for  wagers  of  lambs  and  curiously 
carved  bowls,  and  discoursing  in  rhymed  verse  about  morality, 
religion,  and  politics.  .  .  .  But  we  miss  the  whole  in- 
tention and  effect  of  the  poetry  if  we  exact  from  the  poet  an 
adherence  to  the  conditions  of  the  actual  life  of  shepherds. 
The  picturesque  environment  of  hill,  wood,  dale,  silly  sheep, 
and  ravenous  wild  beasts  is  all  that  the  poet  cares  for  :  if  he 
helps  us  to  remember  that  we  are  amongst  such  scenery,  he 
has  fulfilled  his  design.  .  .  .  If  we  would  enjoy  Spenser's 
Arcadia,  we  must  simply  let  ourselves  float  into  a  dreamland 
of  unsubstantial  form  and  colour.  The  pastoral  surroundings 
are  of  value  only  in  so  far  as  they  colour  and  transfigure  the 
sentiments  of  the  poetry.  .  .  .  Spenser  has  been  accused 
of  bad  taste  in  mixing  up  heathen  mythology  with  the  nar- 
ratives of  the  Bible.  He  represents  Tantalus  and  Pontius 
Pilate  suffering  in  the  same  place  of  punishment.  The  answer 
that  wicked  men  of  all  ages  and  creeds  may  reasonably  be 
supposed  to  suffer  together,  is  complete.  .  .  .  He  has 
been  accused  of  extravagant  violations  of  probability.  To 
this  it  may  be  answered  that,  when  we  consent  to  be  intro- 
duced to  Faery  land,  we  sign  a  dispensation  from  the  ordinary 
conditions  of  life." — William  Minto. 


56  SPENSER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Much  can  they  praise  the  trees  so  straight  and  high, 

The  sailing  pine  ;  the  cedar  proud  and  tall ; 
The  vine-prop  elm  ;  the  poplar  never  dry  ; 

The  builder  oak,  sole  king  of  forests  all ; 
The  aspen  good  for  staves  ;  the  cypress  funeral ; 

The  laurel,  meed  of  mighty  conquerors 
And  poets  sage  ;  the  fir  that  weepeth  still  ; 

The  willow,  worn  of  forlorn  paramours  ; 
The  yew,  obedient  to  the  bender's  will ; 
The  birch  for  shafts  ;  the  sallow  for  the  mill ; 

The  myrrh,  sweet-bleeding  in  the  bitter  wound  ; 
The  war-like  beech,  the  ash  for  nothing  ill ; 

The  fruitful  olive  and  the  plaintane  round." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

"  The  god  of  Shepheards,  Tityrus,  is  dead, 

Who  taught  me  homely,  as  I  can,  to  make  ; 
He,  whilst  he  lived,  was  the  soveraigne  head 

Of  shepheards  all  that  bene  with  love  ytake  ; 
Well  couth  he  wayle  his  woes,  and  lightly  slake 

The  flames  which  love  within  his  heart  had  bredd, 
And  tell  us  mery  tales  to  keepe  us  wake, 

The  while  our  sheep  about  us  safely  fedde. 
Nowe  dead  he  is,  and  lyeth  wrapt  in  lead, 

(Oh  !  why  should  Death  on  him  such  outrage  show  ?  ) 
And  all  hys  passing  skil  with  hym  is  fledde, 

The  fame  whereof  doth  dayly  greater  growe. 
But  if  on  me  some  little  drops  would  flow 

Of  that  the  spring  was  in  his  learned  hedde, 
I  woulde  learne  these  woods  to  wayle  my  woe, 

And  teach  the  trees  their  trickling  teares  to  shedde." 

—  The  Shepheards  Calendar. 

"  It  there  befell,  as  I  the  fields  did  range 

Fearlesse  and  free,  a  faire  young  Lionesse, 
White  as  the  native  rose  before  the  chaunge 

Which  Venus'  blood  did  in  her  leaves  impresse. 


SPENSER  57 

I  spied  playing  on  the  grassie  playne 

Her  youthfull  sports  and  kindlie  wantonnesse, 
That  did  all  other  beasts  in  beawtie  staine. 

Much  was  I  moved  at  so  goodly  sight, 
Whose  like  before  mine  eye  had  seldome  scene, 

And  gan  to  cast  how  I  her  compasse  might, 
And  bring  to  hand  that  yet  had  never  beene  ; 

So  well  I  wrought  with  mildnes  and  with  paine, 
That  I  her  caught  disporting  on  the  greene, 

And  brought  away  fast  bound  with  silver  chaine." 

— Daphnaida. 


Exquisite  Melody. — Spenser  was  a  great  metrician. 
"  All  poets,"  says  Professor  Wilson,  "  have,  since  Warton's 
time,  agreed  in  thinking  the  Spenserian  stanza  the  finest  ever 
conceived  by  the  soul  of  man."  Spenser  was  indeed  to 
prove 

"  That  no  tongue  hath  the  muse's  heired 
For  verse,  and  that  sweet  music  to  the  ear 
Struck  out  of  rhyme,  so  naturally  as  this." 

"  He  had  that  subtle  perfection  of  phrase  and  that  happy  co- 
alescence of  music^  and  meaning,  where  each  reinforces  the 
other,  that  define  a  man  as  poet  and  make  all  ears  converts 
and  partisans.  .  .  .  No  other  English  poet  has  found  the 
variety  and  compass  which  enlivened  the  octave  stanza  under 
his  sensitive  touch.  .  .  .  The  music  makes  great  part  of 
the  meaning,  and  leads  the  thought  along  its  pleasant  paths. 
He  found  the  octave  stanza  not  roomy  enough,  so 
first  ran  it  over  into  another  line,  and  then  ran  that  added 
line  over  into  an  Alexandrine,  in  which  the  melody  of  one 
stanza  seems  forever  longing  and  feeling  forward  after  that 
which  is  to  follow.  .  .  .  His  great  glory  is  that  he  taught 
his  own  language  to  sing  and  move  to  measure  harmonious 
and  noble.  The  service  which  Spenser  did  to  our  literature 
by  this  exquisite  sense  of  harmony  is  incalculable.  His  fine 
ear,  abhorrent  of  barbarous  dissonance,  his  dainty  tongue, 


58  SPENSER 

that  loves  to  prolong  the  relish  of  a  musical  phrase,  made 
possible  the  transition  from  the  cast-iron  stiffness  of  *  Ferrex 
and  Porrex  '  to  the  Damascus  pliancy  of  Fletcher  and  Shake- 
speare. .  .  .  There  is  no  ebb  and  flow  in  his  meter 
more  than  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic,  but  wave  follows 
wave  with  equable  gainings  and  recessions,  the  one  sliding 
back  in  fluent  music  to  be  mingled  with  and  carried  forward 
by  the  next.  .  .  .  They  [Spenser's  dreams]  seem  singing 
to  you  as  the  sirens  to  Guyon,  and  we  linger  like  him."- 
Lowell. 

"  What  he  did  was  to  reveal  to  English  ears  as  it  had 
never  been  revealed  before,  at  least  since  the  days  of  Chaucer, 
the  sweet  music,  the  refined  grace,  the  inexhaustible  versatil- 
ity of  the  English  tongue.  .  .  .  There  is  one  portion  of 
the  beauty  of  the  '  Faery  Queene  '  which,  in  its  perfection  and 
fulness,  had  never  yet  been  reached  in  English  poetry.  This 
was  the  music  and  melody  of  his  verse.  It  was  this  wonder- 
ful, almost  unfailing,  sweetness  of  numbers  which  probably 
as  much  as  anything  else  set  the  '  Faery  Queene  '  at  once  above 
all  contemporary  poetry.  Spenser  was  the  first  to  show  that 
he  had  acquired  a  command  over  what  had  hitherto  been 
heard  only  in  exquisite  fragments,  passing  too  soon  into 
roughness  and  confusion.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that 
his  cunning  never  fails,  that  his  ear  is  never  dull  or  off  its 
guard.  But  when  the  length  and  magnitude  of  the  composi- 
tion are  considered,  with  the  restraints  imposed  by  the  new 
nine-line  stanza,  however  convenient  it  may  have  been,  the 
vigor,  the  invention,  the  volume  and  rush  of  language,  and 
the  keenness  and  truth  of  ear  amid  its  diversified  tasks  are  in- 
deed admirable,  which  could  keep  up  so  prolonged  and  so 
majestic  a  stream  of  original  and  varied  poetical  melody.  If 
his  stanzas  are  monotonous,  it  is  with  the  grand  monotony 
of  the  sea-shore,  where  billow  follows  billow,  each  swelling 
diversely,  and  broken  into  different  curves  and  waves  upon  its 
mounting  surface,  till  at  last  it  falls  over  and  spreads  and 


SPENSER  59 

rushes  up  in  a  last  long  line  of  foam  upon  the  beach." — 
R.  W.  Church. 

"  Spenser's  verse  is  like  a  river,  wide  and  deep  and  strong, 
but  moderating  its  waves  and  conveying  them  all  in  a  steady, 
soft,  irresistible  sweep  forward.  .  .  .  No  poem  runs  with 
such  an  entire  absence  of  effort,  with  such  an  easy  eloquence, 
with  such  an  effect,  as  has  been  said  already,  of  flowing  water 
as  the  '  Faery  Queene  ' — the  inimitably  fluent  and  velvet  me- 
dium which  seems  to  lull  some  readers  to  inattention  by  its 
very  smoothness  and  deceive  others  into  a  belief  in  its  lack  of 
matter  by  the  very  finish  and  brilliancy  of  its  form." — George 
Saintsbury. 

"His  best  thoughts  were  born  in  music.  The  spirit  of 
poetry  is  not  only  felt  in  his  sentiments  and  made  visible  in 
his  imagery,  but  it  steals  out  in  the  recurring  chimes  of  his 
complicated  stanza." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"To  get  a  full  notion  of  Spenser's  power  of  'ravishing 
human  sense'  with  word-music,  one  must  read  at  least  a 
canto,  if  not  a  whole  book  of  the  'Faery  Queen.'  The 
dreamy,  melodious  softness  of  his  numbers  and  his  ideas  has 
something  of  the  luxurious  charm  that  the  song  of  the  mer- 
maids had  for  the  ear  of  Guyon." — William  Minto. 

"  Then  comes  the  '  Epithalamion  ' — the  marriage-song 
made  by  the  poet  himself  for  his  own  bride,  in  which  the 
sweet  music  that  runs  through  all  Spenser's  verse,  and  makes  it 
answerable  to  Milton's  praise  of  divine  philosophy  as  'a  per- 
petual feast  of  nectared  sweets,  where  no  crude  surfeit  reigns,' 
fills  us  with  something  like  his  own  sense  of  fullest  earthly 
joy." — Henry  Morley. 

"  His  versification  is  almost  perpetual  honey." — Leigh 
Hunt. 


60  SPENSER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Behold,  whiles  she  before  the  altar  stands, 
Hearing  the  holy  priest  that  to  her  speakes, 
And  blesseth  her  with  his  two  happy  hands, 
How  the  red  roses  flush  up  in  her  cheekes, 
And  the  pure  snow,  with  goodly  vermill  stayne, 
Like  crimsin  dyde  in  grayne  : 
That  even  th'  angels,  which  continually 
About  the  sacred  altare  doe  remaine, 
Forget  their  service  and  about  her  fly, 
Ofte  peeping  in  her  face,  that  seems  more  fayre 
The  more  they  on  it  stare. 
But  her  sad  eyes,  still  fastened  on  the  ground, 
Are  governed  with  goodly  modesty, 
That  suffers  not  one  looke  to  glaunce  awry, 
Which  may  let  in  a  little  thought  unsownd. 
Why  blush  ye,  Love,  to  give  to  me  your  hand, 
The  pledge  of  all  our  band  ! 
Sing,  ye  sweet  Angels,  Alleluya  sing, 
That  all  the  woods  may  answere,  and  your  eccho  ring." 

— Epithala  m  ion. 

11  It  was  upon  a  holiday, 

When  shepheardes  groomes  han  leave  to  playe, 
I  cast  to  goe  a  shooting. 
Long  wandring  up  and  downe  the  land 
With  bowe  and  bolts  in  either  hand, 
For  birds  in  bushes  tooting  *, 
At  length  within  an  Yvie  todde  *  *, 
(There  shrouded  was  the  little  God) 
I  heard  a  busie  bustling. 
I  bent  my  bolt  against  the  bush, 
Listening  if  anything  did  rushe, 
But  then  heard  no  more  rustling  : 


With  that  sprong  forth  a  naked  swayne 
With  spotted  wings,  like  Peacock's  trayne, 


SPENSER  6l 

And  laughing  lope  to  a  tree  ; 

His  gylden  quiver  at  his  backe, 

And  silver  bowe,  which  was  but  slacke, 

Which  lightly  he  bent  at  me  : 

That  seeing,  I  levelde  againe 

And  shott  at  him  with  might  and  maine, 

As  thick  as  it  had  hayled." 

—  The  Shepheards  Calendar. 

* 

"  Ne  suffereth  it  [love]  uncomely  idlenesse, 
In  his  free  thought  to  build  her  sluggish  nest ; 
Ne  suffereth  it  thought  of  ungentlenesse 
Ever  to  creepe  into  his  noble  brest ; 
But  to  the  highest  and  the  worthiest 
Lifteth  it  up  that  els  would  lowly  fall  : 
It  lettes  not  fall,  it  lettes  it  not  to  rest ; 
It  lettes  not  scarse  this  prince  to  breath  at  all. 
But  to  his  first  poursuit  him  forward  still  doth  call." 

—  The  Faery  Qucene. 

.  Perception  of  Beauty — Sensitiveness. — "Spen- 
der's perception  of  beauty  of  all  kinds  was  singularly  and 
characteristically  quick  and  sympathetic.  It  was  one  of  his 
great  gifts  ;  perhaps  the  most  special  and  unstinted.  Except 
Shakespeare,  who  had  it  with  other  and  greater  gifts,  no  one 
in  that  time  approached  to  Spenser  in  feeling  the  presence  of 
that  commanding  and  mysterious  idea,  compounded  of  so 
many  things,  yet  of  which  the  true  secret  escapes  us  still,  to 
which  we  give  the  name  of  beauty.  ...  A  beautiful 
scene,  a  beautiful  person,  a  beautiful  poem,  a  mind  and  char- 
acter with  that  combination  of  charms,  which,  for  want  of 
another  word,  we  call  by  that  half-spiritual,  half-material  word 
'  beautiful,'  at  once  set  his  imagination  at  work  to  respond  to 
it  and  reflect  it.  ...  Say  what  we  will,  and  a  great 
deal  may  be  said,  of  his  lavish  profusion,  his  heady  and  un- 
controlled excess,  in  the  richness  of  picture  and  imagery  in 
which  he  indulges,  still  there  it  lies  before  us,  like  the  most 


62  SPENSER 

gorgeous  of  summer  gardens,  in  the  glory  and  brilliancy  of  its 
varied  blooms,  in  the  wonder  of  its  strange  forms  of  life,  in  the 
changefulness  of  its  exquisite  and  delicious  scents.  No  one 
who  cares  for  poetic  beauty  can  be  insensible  to  it.  He  may 
prefer  something  more  severe  and  chastened.  He  may  observe 
on  the  waste  of  wealth  and  power.  He  may  blame  the  prodi- 
gal expense  of  language  and  the  long  spaces  which  the  poet 
takes  up  to  produce  his  effect.  He  may  often  dislike  or  dis- 
trust the  moral  aspect  of  the  poet's  impartial  sensitiveness 
to  all  outward  beauty.  .  .  .  But  there  is  no  gainsaying 
the  beauty  which  never  fails  and  disappoints,  open  the  poem 
where  you  will.  There  is  no  gainsaying  its  variety,  often  so 
unexpected  and  novel." — £.  W.  Church. 

"He  had  that  perception  of  the  loveliness  of  things,  and 
that  joy  in  the  perception,  which  makes  continual  poetic  crea- 
tion a  necessity  of  existence.  .  .  .  '  The  Faery  Queene ' 
proves  that  the  perception  of  the  beautiful  can  make  the  heart 
more  abidingly  glad  than  the  perception  of  the  ludicrous." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  He  is,  of  all  our  poets,  the  most  truly  sensuous,  using  the 
word  as  Milton  probably  meant  it  when  he  said  that  poetry 
should  be  'simple,  sensuous,  and  passionate.'  .  .  .  Every 
one  of  Spenser's  senses  was  as  exquisitely  alive  to  the  impressions 
of  material,  as  every  organ  of  his  soul  was  to  those  of  spiritual 
beauty.  .  .  .  We  sometimes  feel  in  reading  him  as  if  he 
were  the  pure  sense  of  the  beautiful  incarnated  to  the  one  end 
that  he  might  interpret  it  to  our  duller  perceptions.  So  ex- 
quisite was  his  sensibility  that  with  him  sensation  and  intellec- 
tion seem  identical,  and  we  'can  almost  say  his  body  thought,' 
.  .  .  So  entirely  are  beauty  and  the  delight  in  it  the  native 
element  of  Spenser  that,  whenever,  in  the  *  Faery  Queene  '  you 
come  suddenly  on  the  moral,  it  gives  you  a  shock  of  unpleas- 
ant surprise,  a  kind  of  grit,  as  when  one's  teeth  close  on  a  bit 
of  gravel  in  a  dish  of  strawberries  and  cream.  .  .  .  While 
the  senses  of  most  men  live  in  the  cellar,  his  'were  laid  in 


SPENSER  63 

a  large  upper  chamber  which  opened  toward  the  sunrising. ' 
Whoever  can  endure  unmixed  delight,  whoever  can 
tolerate  music  and  painting  and  poetry  all  in  one,  whoever 
wishes  to  be  rid  of  thought  and  to  let  the  busy  anvils  of  the 
brain  be  silent  for  a  time,  let  him  read  the  '  Faery  Queene.' 
There  is  the  land  of  pure  heart's  ease,  where  no  ache  or  sorrow 
of  spirit  can  enter.  .  .  .  This  exaltation  with  which  love 
sometimes  subtilizes  the  nerves  of  coarsest  men  so  that  they 
feel  and  see,  not  the  thing  as  it  seems  to  others,  but  the 
beauty  of  it,  the  joy  of  it,  the  soul  of  eternal  youth  that  is  in 
it,  would  appear  to  have  been  the  normal  condition  of  Spen- 
ser."— Lowell. 

"  Beauty,  Spenser  maintained,  is  twofold.  There  is  a 
beauty  which  is  a  mere  pasture  to  the  eye ;  it  is  a  spoil  for 
which  we  grow  greedy ;  and  there  is  the  higher 

beauty  of  which  the  peculiar  quality  is  a  penetrating  radiance; 
it  illuminates  all  that  comes  into  its  presence;  it  is  a  beam 
from  the  divine  fount  of  light.  .  .  .  Upon  the  whole, 
the  '  Faery  Queene,'  if  nothing  else,  is  at  least  a  labyrinth  of 
beauty,  a  forest  of  old  romance,  in  which  it  is  possible  to  lose 
oneself  more  irrecoverably  amid  the  tangled  luxury  of  loveli- 
ness than  elsewhere  in  English  poetry.  .  .  .  But  Spenser's 
rare  sensibility  to  beauty  would  have  found  itself  ill  content  if 
he  had  had  mere  solitude  of  nature,  however  fair,  to  contem- 
plate. In  his  perfect  joy  in  the  presence  of  human  beauty  he 
is  thoroughly  a  man  of  the  Renaissance.  The  visions  which 
he  creates  of  man  and  woman  cast  a  spell  over  their  creator ; 
he  cannot  withdraw  his  gaze  from  the  creatures  of  his  imagi- 
nation ;  he  must  satiate  his  senses  with  their  loveliness;  all  his 
being  is  thrilled  with  a  pure  ecstasy  as  he  continues  to  gaze. 
And  what  form  of  human  beauty  is  there  to  which  Spenser 
does  not  pay  a  poet's  homage  ?  But  more  than  any 

other  form  of  beauty,  that  of  womanhood  charms  Spenser, 
renders  his  imagination  '  empassioned,'  or  calms  and  com- 
pletely satisfies  it." — Edward  Dowden. 


64  SPENSER 

1 '  Above  all,  his  was  a  soul  captivated  by  sublime  and 
chaste  beauty,  eminently  platonic.  .  .  .  He  has  an  ado- 
ration for  beauty  worthy  of  Dante  and  Plotinus.  And  this 
because  he  never  considers  it  a  mere  harmony  of  color  and 
form  but  an  emanation  of  unique,  heavenly,  imperishable 
beauty,  which  no  mortal  eye  can  see,  and  which  is  the  master- 
piece of  the  great  Author  of  the  worlds.  Bodies  only  render  it 
visible ;  it  does  not  live  in  them ;  charm  and  attraction  are 
not  in  things  but  in  the  immortal  idea  which  shines  through 
them.  .  .  .  This  is  the  greatness  of  his  work  ;  he  has 
succeeded  in  seizing  beauty  in  its  fulness  because  he  cared 
for  nothing  but  beauty.  .  .  .  Each  story  is  modulated 
with  respect  to  another  and  all  with  respect  to  a  certain  effect 
which  is  being  worked  out.  Thus  a  beauty  issues  from  this 
harmony — the  beauty  in  the  poet's  heart — which  his  whole 
soul  strives  to  express ;  a  noble  and  yet  a  cheerful  beauty, 
made  up  of  moral  elevation  and  sensuous  seductions,  English 
in  sentiment,  Italian  in  externals,  chivalric  in  subject,  modern 
in  its  perfection,  representing  a  unique  and  wonderful  epoch, 
the  appearance  of  paganism  in  a  Christian  race  and  the  wor- 
ship of  form  by  an  imagination  of  the  North." — Taine. 

"  For  the  lover  of  poetry,  for  the  reader  who  understands 
and  can  receive  the  poetic  charm,  the  revelation  of  beauty  in 
metrical  language,  no  English  poem  is  the  superior,  or,  range 
and  variety  being  considered,  the  equal  of  the  'Faery  Queene.' 
.  .  .  He  is  the  poet  of  all  others  for  those  who  seek  in 
poetry  only  poetical  qualities." — George  Saintsbury. 

"  The  love  of  beauty  .  .  .  is  the  moving  principle  of 
his  mind.  ...  He  luxuriates  equally  in  scenes  of  Eastern 
magnificence  or  the  still  solitude  of  a  hermit's  cell,  in  the  ex- 
tremes of  sensuality  or  refinement." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  He  is  more  luxurious  than  Ariosto  or  Tasso,  more  haunted 
with  the  presence  of  beauty." — Leigh  Hunt. 


SPENSER  65 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  over  all  of  purest  gold  was  spred 
A  trayle  of  y vie  in  his  native  hew  ; 
For  the  rich  metall  was  so  coloured 
That  wight  who  did  not  well  avis'd  it  vew 
Would  surely  deeme  it  to  bee  yvie  trew ; 
Low  his  lascivious  armes  adown  did  creepe 
That  themselves  dipping  in  the  silver  dew 
Their  fleecy  flowres  they  fearefully  did  steepe, 
Which  drops  of  christall  seemed  for  wantonese  to  weepe." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

With  that  I  saw  two  swannes  of  goodly  hewe 
Come  softly  swimming  downe  along  the  Lee ; 
Two  fairer  birds  I  yet  did  never  see  ; 
The  snow  which  doth  the  top  of  Pindus  strew, 
Did  never  whiter  shew 

Nor  Jove  himselfe,  when  he  a  swan  would  be 
For  love  of  Leda,  whiter  did  appeare  ; 
Yet  Leda  was  (they  say)  as  white  as  he  ; 
Yet  not  so  white  as  these,  nor  nothing  neare  ; 
So  purely  white  they  were 

That  even  the  gentle  streame  the  which  them  bare 
Seem'd  foule  to  them,  and  bad  his  billowes  spare 
To  wet  their  silken  feathers,  least  they  might 
Soyle  their  fayre  plumes  with  water  not  so  fayre, 
And  marre  their  beauties  bright, 
That  shone  as  heavens  light, 
Against  their  brydale  day,  which  was  not  long  : 
Sweet  Themmes !  runne  softly  till  I  end  my  song." 

— Prothalamion. 

"  Lastly  his  shinie  wings  as  silver  bright, 
Painted  with  thousand  colours  passing  farre 
All  painter's  skill,  he  did  about  him  dight : 
Not  halfe  so  manie  sundrie  colours  arre 
In  Iris  bow ;  ne  heaven  doth  shine  so  bright, 
Distinguished  with  manie  a  twinckling  starre ; 
Nor  Junoes  bird,  in  her  ey-spotted  traine, 
So  many  goodly  colours  doth  containe." — Muiopotmos. 
5 


66  SPENSER 

/v/5.  Moral  Elevation  —  Manliness.  —  "The  moral 
//picture  presented  in  the  '  Faery  Queene  '  is  the  ideal  of  noble 
manliness  in  Elizabeth's  time.  We  must  admire  the  intrinsic 
nobleness  of  Spenser's  general  aim,  his  conception  of  human 
life,  at  once  so  exacting  and  so  indulgent,  his  high  ethical 
principles  and  ideals,  his  unfeigned  honor  for  all  that  is  pure 
and  brave  and  unselfish  and  tender,  his  generous  estimate  of 
what  is  due  from  man  to  man  of  service,  affection,  and  fidel- 
ity. .  .  .  Spenser  had  in  his  nature,  besides  sweet- 
ness, his  full  proportion  of  the  stern  and  high  manliness  of 
his  generation  ;  noble  and  heroic  ideals  captivate  him  by 
their  attractions.  He  kindles  naturally  and  genuinely  at  what 
proves  and  draws  out  men's  courage,  their  self-command, 
their  self-sacrifice.  He  can  moralize  with  the  best  in  terse 
and  deep-reaching  apothegms  of  melancholy  or  even  despair- 
ing experience.  .  .  .  That  character  of  the  completed 
man,  raised  above  what  is  poor  and  low,  and  governed  by 
noble  tempers  and  pure  principles,  has  in  Spenser  two  con- 
spicuous elements.  In  the  first  place  it  is  based  on  manliness. 
.  .  .  The  manliness  which  is  at  the  foundation  of  all 
that  is  good  in  them  [his  personages  illustrating  the  virtues]  is 
a  universal  quality  common  to  them  all,  rooted  and  imbedded 
in  the  governing  idea  or  standard  of  moral  character  in  the 
poem.  The  substance  of  the  '  Faery  Queene  '  is  the  poet's  phi- 
losophy of  life.  .  .  .  It  is  the  quality  of  soul  which  frankly 
accepts  the  conditions  in  human  life  of  labor,  of  obedience,  of 
effort,  of  unequal  success,  which  does  not  quarrel  with  them  or 
evade  them,  but  takes  for  granted  with  unquestioning  alacrity 
that  man  is  called — by  his  call  to  high  aims  and  destiny — to 
a  continual  struggle  with  difficulty,  with  pain,  with  evil,  and 
makes  it  a  point  of  honor  not  to  be  dismayed  or  wearied  out 
by  them.  .  .  .  It  is  a  cheerful  and  serious  willingness  for 
hard  work  and  endurance  as  being  inevitable  and  very  bearable 
necessities,  together  with  even  a  pleasure  in  encountering  trials 
which  put  a  man  on  his  mettle,  an  enjoyment  of  the  contest 


SPENSER  67 

and  the  risk,  even  in  play.  It  is  the  quality  which  seizes  on 
the  paramount  idea  of  duty,  as  something  which  leaves  a  man 
no  choice."—  R.  W.  Church. 

"  We  are  in  communion  with  a  nature  in  which  the  most 
delicate,  the  most  voluptuous  sense  of  beauty  is  in  harmony 
with  the  austerest  recognition  of  the  paramount  obligations  of 
goodness  and  rectitude.  The  beauty  of  material  objects  never 
obscures  to  him  the  beauty  of  holiness." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"Spenser's  notions  of  love  were  so  nobly  pure  as  not  to 
disqualify  him  for  achieving  the  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail. 
.  .  .  His  rebukes  of  clerical  worldliness  are  in  the  Pu- 
ritan tone.  .  .  .  No  man  can  read  the  '  Faery  Queene  ' 
and  be  anything  but  the  better  for  it.  Through  that  rude  age 
when  Maids  of  Honor  drank  beer  for  breakfast  and  Hamlet 
could  say  a  gross  thing  to  Ophelia,  he  passes  serenely,  ab- 
stracted and  high,  the  Don  Quixote  of  poets.  .  .  .  With 
a  purity  like  that  of  thrice  bolted  snow,  he  had  none  of  its 
coldness. " — Lowell. 

"  We  find  in  this  ['  Faery  Queene,']  and  subordinately  in  his 
other  works,  a  mind  of  uncommon  exaltation  and  an  earnest 
love  of  virtue  and  nobleness,  and  we  surmise  a  character  to 
correspond.  .  .  .  Among  very  great  poems,  the  <  Divina 
Commedia  '  of  Dante  and  the  '  Faery  Queene  '  of  Spenser  stand 
alone  in  taking  as  their  direct  theme  moral  or  spiritual  virtue, 
to  be  exhibited,  enforced,  and  illustrated." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  The  poet  freely  chooses  what  pleases  his  fancy  in  classical 
or  neo-classical  mythology ;  yet  at  heart  he  is  almost  Puritan. 
Not,  indeed,  Puritan  in  any  turning  away  from  innocent  de- 
lights;  not  Puritan  in  casting  dishonor  on  our  earthly  life,  its 
beauty,  its  splendor,  its  joy,  its  passion;  but  Puritan  as  Milton 
was  when  he  wrote  '  Lycidas,'  in  his  weight  of  moral  purpose, 
in  his  love  of  a  grave  plainness  in  religion  and  of  humble 
laboriousness  in  those  who  are  shepherds  under  Christ.  .  .  . 
To  render  men's  feelings  more  sane,  pure,  and  permanent — 
this  surely  was  included  in  the  great  design  of  the  '  Faery 


68  SPENSER 

Queene ; '  it  was  deliberately  kept  before  him  as  an  object  by 
Spenser — '  our  sage  and  serious  Spenser,  whom  I  dare  to  name 
a  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas. '  .  .  .  The  ethical 
teaching  of  Spenser,  extracted  from  his  poetry,  is  worthy  a 
careful  study.  Ascetic  in  the  best  sense  of  that  word  Spenser 
assuredly  was ;  he  desired  to  strengthen  every  part  of  our 
nature  by  heroic  discipline  and  to  subordinate  the  lower  parts 
to  the  higher,  so  that,  if  strong,  they  might  be  strong  for  ser- 
vice, not  for  mastery.  ...  By  his  enthusiasm  on  behalf 
of  the  noblest  moral  qualities,  by  his  strenuous  joy  in  the 
presence  of  the  noblest  human  creatures — man  and  woman — 
Spenser  breathes  into  us  a  breath  of  life  which  has  an  anti- 
septic power,  which  kills  the  germs  of  disease,  and  is  antago- 
nistic to  the  relaxed  fibre,  the  lethargy,  the  dissolution  or  dis- 
integrating life-in-death  of  sensuality.  Any  heroism  of  man 
or  woman  is  like  wine  to  gladden  Spenser's  heart ;  we  see 
through  the  verse  how  it  quickens  the  motion  of  his  blood. 
A  swift,  clear  flame  of  sympathy,  like  an  answering  beacon  lit 
upon  the  high  places  of  his  soul,  even  though  it  be  an  imagined 
one,  summoning  his  own.  .  .  .  To  incite  and  to  conduct 
men  to  an  active  virtue  is  not  only  the  express  purpose  of  the 
*  Faery  Queene,'  but  as  far  as  a  poem  can  render  such  service, 
the  '  Faery  Queene  '  doubtless  has  actually  served  to  train 
knights  of  holiness,  knights  of  temperance,  knights  of  cour- 
tesy. .  .  .  He  strove,  as  far  as  in  him  lay,  to  breed  a 
race  of  high-souled  English  gentlemen,  who  should  have  none 
of  the  meanness  of  the  libertine,  none  of  the  meanness  of  the 
precisian." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  Milton  himself,  the  severe  Milton,  extolled  his  [Spen- 
ser's] moral  teachings;  his  philosophical  idealism  is  evidently 
no  mere  poet's  plaything  or  parrot's  lesson,  but  thoroughly 
thought  out  and  believed  in."  —  George  Saintsbury. 

"It  [the  '  Faery  Queen  ']  is  a  continual,  deliberate  en- 
deavor to  enlist  the  restless  intellect  and  chivalrous  feelings  of 
an  inquiring  and  romantic  age  on  the  side  of  goodness  and 


SPENSER  69 

faith,  of  unity  and  justice.  .  .  .  Spenser,  then,  was 
essentially  a  sacred  poet;  but  the  delicacy  and  insinuating 
gentleness  of  his  disposition  were  better  fitted  to  the  veiled 
than  to  the  direct  mode  of  instruction."— -John  Keble. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  All  places   they  [Ignorance   and   Barbarism]  with  follie  have 
possest, 

And  with  vaine  toyes  the  vulgare  entertaine ; 
But  me  have  banished,  with  all  the  rest 

That  whilome  wont  to  wait  upon  my  traine, 
Fine  Counterfesaunce  and  unhurtfull  Sport, 
Delight,  and  Laughter,  deckt  in  seemly  sort. 

"  But  that  same  gentle  Spirit,  from  whose  pen 
Large  streams  of  honnie  and  sweete  Nectar  flowe, 

Scorning  the  boldnes  of  such  base-born  men, 
Which  dare  their  follies  forth  so  rashlie  throwe, 

Doth  rather  chose  to  sit  in  idle  Cell, 

Than  so  himselfe  to  mockerie  to  sell." 

—  The  Teares  of  the  Muses. 

"  Love,  lift  me  up  upon  thy  golden  wings, 

From  this  base  world  unto  thy  heavens  hight, 
Where  I  may  see  those  admirable  things 

Which  there  thou  workest  by  thy  soveraine  might, 
Farre  above  feeble  reach  of  earthly  sight, 
That  I  thereof  an  heavenly  hymne  may  sing 
Unto  the  God  of  Love,  high  heavens  king. 

Many  lewd  layes  (ah  !  woe  is  me  the  more  ! ) 
In  praise  of  that  mad  fit  which  fooles  call  love, 

I  have  in  th'  heat  of  youth  made  heretofore, 
That  in  light  wits  did  loose  affection  move  ; 
But  all  those  follies  now  I  do  reprove, 

And  turned  have  the  tenor  of  my  string, 

The  heavenly  prayses  of  true  love  to  sing." 

— An  Hymne  of  Heavenly  Love. 


7O  SPENSER 

"  Let  none  then  blame  me,  if  in  discipline 

Of  vertue  and  of  civill  uses  lore, 
I  doe  not  forme  them  to  the  common  line 

Of  present  dayes,  which  are  corrupted  sore, 

But  to  the  antique  use  which  was  of  yore, 
When  good  was  onely  for  it  selfe  desyred, 

And  all  men  sought  their  owne,  and  none  no  more  ; 
When  Justice  was  not  for  most  meed  out-hyred, 
But  simple  Truth  did  rayne,  and  was  of  all  admyred." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

6.  Reverence  for  Womanhood. — "  Spenser  is  the 
creator  of  some  of  the  most  exquisite  embodiments  of  female 
excellence — the  man  who  had  the  high  honor  of  saying  of 
women, 

'  For  demigods  they  be,  and  first  did  spring 
From  heaven,  though  graft  in  frailness  feminine.' 

That  celestial  light  which  occasionally  touches  his  page  with 
an  ineffable  beauty,  and  which  gave  to  him  in  his  own  time 
the  name  of  '  the  heavenly  Spenser,'  is  a  more  wonderful 
emanation  from  his  mind  than  its  subtlest  melodies.  We  es- 
pecially feel  this  in  his  ideal  delineations  of  woman,  in  which 
he  has  only  been  exceeded  by  Shakespeare.  .  .  .  He 
has  been  called  the  poet's  poet;  he  should  also  be  called  the 
woman's  poet,  for  the  feminine  element  in  his  genius  is  its 
loftiest,  deepest,  most  angelic  element.  .  .  .  The  tender- 
ness, the  ethereal  softness  and  grace,  the  moral  purity,  the 
sentiment  untainted  by  sentimentality,  which  characterize 
his  impersonations  of  female  excellence,  show,  too,  that  the 
poet's  brain  had  been  fed  from  his  heart,  and  that  reverence 
for  woman  was  the  instinct  of  his  sensibility  before  it  was  con- 
firmed by  the  insight  of  his  imagination." — E.  P.  Whipplc. 
"  He  pauses,  after  relating  a  lovely  instance  of  chastity,  to 
exhort  women  to  modesty.  He  pours  out  the  wealth  of  his 
respect  and  tenderness  at  the  feet  of  his  heroines.  If  any 


SPENSER  71 

coarse  man  insults  them,  he  calls  to  their  aid  nature  and  the 
gods.  Never  does  he  bring  them  on  his  stage  without  adorn- 
ing their  name  with  splendid  eulogy." — Taine. 

"For  Spenser,  behind  each  woman  made  to  worship  or 
love  rises  a  sacred  presence — Womanhood  itself.  Her  beauty 
of  face  and  limb  is  but  a  manifestation  of  the  invisible  beauty, 
and  this  is  of  one  kin  with  the  Divine  Wisdom  and  the  Divine 
Love.  .  .  .  Spenser's  manner  of  portraiture  seems  to  be 
at  its  best  in  female  figures.  '  The  perfection  of  woman,'  said 
Coleridge,  'is  to  be  characterless,'  meaning  that  no  single 
prominent  quality,  however  excellent,  can  equal  in  beauty 
and  excellence  a  well-developed,  harmonious  nature.  Spen- 
ser loved  also  this  harmony  of  character,  and  he  found  it,  or 
believed  he  found  it,  more  in  woman  than  in  man." — Edward 
Dowden. 

"  Una  is  one  of  the  noblest  contributions  which  poetry  has 
ever  made  to  its  great  picture  gallery  of  character.  .  .  . 
Britomart  is  the  loftiest  of  Spenser's  heroines.  She  is  not 
woman  unsexed,  but  woman  raised  above  woman,  and  there- 
fore woman  still.  .  *.  .  The  mode  in  which  Spenser 
associated  the  virtues  as  well  as  the  graces  with  his  special  idea 
of  womanhood — an  idea  very  remote  from  that  common  in 
our  days — is  nowhere  more  beautifully  illustrated  than  in 
Book  IV.,  canto  IX.,  where  Scudamour  describes  the  temple 
of  Venus  and  the  recovery  of  his  lost  Amoret." — Aubrey  DJ 
Vere. 

"  Where  else  is  woman,  in  her  pure  ideal,  still  so  humanly 
beautiful?" — Professor  Wilson  [Cristopher  North]. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  if  ye  saw  that  which  no  eyes  can  see, 
The  inward  beauty  of  her  lively  spright, 
Garnisht  with  heavenly  guifts  of  high  degree, 
Much  more  then  would  ye  wonder  at  that  sight, 


72  SPENSER 

And  stand  astonisht  like  to  those  which  red 
Medusaes  mazeful  hed. 

There  dwels  sweet  Love  and  constant  Chastity, 
Unspotted  Fayth  and  comely  Womanhood, 
Regard  of  Honour  and  mild  Modesty  ; 

There  Vyrtue  raynes  as  Queene  in  royal  throne, 

And  giveth  lawes  alone, 
The  which  the  base  affections  doe  obay, 

And  yeeld  theyr  services  unto  her  will ; 
Ne  thought  of  things  uncomely  ever  may 

Thereto  approch  to  tempt  her  mind  to  ill." 

— Epithalamion. 

"  Nought  is  there  under  heav'ns  wide  hollownesse, 

That  moves  more  deare  compassion  of  mind, 
Than  beautie  brought  t'  unworthy  wretchednesse 

Through  envies  snares  or  fortunes  freaks  unkind. 

I,  whether  lately  through  her  brightness  blynd, 
Or  through  allegeaunce  and  fast  fealty, 

Which  I  do  owe  unto  all  womankynd, 
Feel  my  heart  perst  with  so  great  agony, 
When  such  I  see  that  all  for  pitty  I  could  dy." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

"  But  ye,  faire  dames  !  the  worlds  deare  ornaments 

And  lively  images  of  heavens  light, 
Let  not  your  beames  with  such  disparagements 

Be  dimd  and  your  bright  glorie  darkned  quight ; 

But,  mindfull  still  of  your  first  countries  sight, 
Doe  still  preserve  your  first  informed  grace, 
Whose  shadow  yet  shynes  in  your  beauteous  face. 

"  Loath  that  foule  blot,  that  hellish  fierbrand, 
Disloiall  lust,  faire  Beauties  foulest  blame, 
That  base  affections,  which  your  eares  would  bland, 
Commend  to  you  by  loves  abused  name, 
But  is  indeede  the  bondslave  of  defame  ; 
Which  will  the  garland  of  your  glorie  marre, 
And  quench  the  light  of  your  bright  shyning  star." 

— An  Hymne  in  Honour  of  Beautie. 


SPENSER  73 

Diffuseness  —  Obscurity.— "  As  a  narrative,  the 
Faery  Queene '  has,  I  think,  every  fault  of  which  that  kind  of 
writing  is  capable.  ...  He  habitually  dilates  rather 
than  compresses.  .  .  .  The  characters  are  vague,  and, 
even  were  they  not,  they  drop  out  of  the  story  so  often  and  re- 
main out  of  it  so  long  that  we  have  forgotten  who  they  are 
when  we  meet  them  again;  the  episodes  hinder  the  advance 
of  the  action  instead  of  relieving  it  with  variety  of  incident  or 
novelty  of  situation;  the  plot  recalls  drearily  our  ancient 
enemy,  the  metrical  romance.  .  .  .  The  generous  indefi- 
niteness,  which  treats  an  hour  more  or  less  as  of  no  account,  is  in 
keeping  with  that  sense  of  endless  leisure  which  it  is  one  chief 
merit  of  the  poem  to  suggest.  But  Spenser's  dilation  extends  to 
thoughts  as  well  as  to  phrases  and  images.  He  does  not  love 
the  concise.  Yet  his  dilation  is  not  a  mere  distention,  but 
the  expansion  of  natural  growth  in  the  rich  soil  of  his  own 
mind,  wherein  the  merest  stick  of  a  verse  puts  forth  leaves  and 
blossoms. " — Lowell. 

"  Much  of  the  covert  sense  is  easily  detected  ;  but  to  explain 
all  would  require  a  commentator  who  could  not  only  think 
from  Spenser's  mind,  but  recall  from  oblivion  all  the  gossip  of 
Elizabeth's  court.  .  .  .  The  cumbrousness  and  confusion 
and  diffusion  which  the  critics  have  recognized  in  the  poem 
are  to  be  referred  to  the  fact  that  the  processes  of  the  under- 
standing, coldly  contemplating  the  general  plan,  are  in  hope- 
less antagonism  to  the  processes  of  the  imagination,  rapturously 
beholding  and  bodying  forth  the  separate  facts.  The  moment 
the  poet  abandons  himself  to  his  genius  he  forgets,  and  makes 
us  forget,  the  purpose  he  had  in  view  at  the  start;  and  he  and 
we  are  only  recalled  from  the  delicious  dream  that  he  may 
moralize  and  that  we  may  yawn.  .  .  .  He  has  auroral 
lights  in  profusion  but  no  lightning." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  The  *  Faery  Queene  '  is  an  heroic  poem  in  which  the  hero- 
ine, who  gives  her  name  to  it,  never  appears:  a  story,  of  which 
the  basis  and  starting-point  is  whimsically  withheld  for  disclos- 


74  SPENSER 

ure  in  the  last  book,  which  was  never  written.  The  passion 
of  the  age  was  for  ingenious  riddling  in  morality  as  in  love. 
.  .  .  Exaggeration,  profuseness,  prolixity,  were  the  literary 
diseases  of  the  age ;  an  age  of  great  excitement  and  hope, 
which  had  suddenly  discovered  its  wealth  and  its  powers,  but 
not  the  rules  of  true  economy  in  using  them.  .  .  .  There 
was  in  Spenser  an  incontinence  of  the  descriptive  faculty. 
There  is  continually  haunting  us,  amid  incontestable 
richness,  vigor,  and  beauty,  a  sense  that  the  work  is  over- 
done. .  .  .  There  is  no  want  in  him,  either,  of  that 
power  of  epigrammatic  terseness  which,  in  spite  of  its  diffuse- 
ness,  his  age  valued  and  cultivated.  But  when  he  gets  on 
a  story  or  scene,  he  never  knows  when  to  stop.  His  duels  go 
on,  stanza  after  stanza,  till  there  is  no  sound  part  left  in  either 
champion.  ...  He  drowns  us  in  words.  .  .  .  But 
say  what  we  will,  and  a  great  deal  may  be  said,  of  his  lavish 
profusion,  his  heady  and  uncontrolled  excess,  in  the  richness 
of  picture  and  allegory  in  which  he  indulges — still,  there  it 
lies  before  us,  like  the  most  gorgeous  of  summer  gardens. 
.  .  .  The  '  Faery  Queene, '  as  a  whole,  bears  on  its  face  a 
great  fault  of  construction.  It  carries  with  it  no  adequate  ac- 
count of  its  own  story  ;  it  does  not  explain  itself  or  contain  in 
its  own  structure  what  would  enable  a  reader  to  understand 
how  it  arose.  It  has-  to  be  accounted  for  by  a  prose  explana- 
tion and  key  outside  of  itself.  .  .  .  The  truth  is  that  the 
power  of  ordering  and  connecting  a  long  and  complicated  plan 
was  not  one  of  Spenser's  gifts.  In  the  first  two  books,  the  al- 
legorical story  proceeds  from  point  to  point  with  fair  coher- 
ence and  consecutiveness.  After  them  the  attempt  to  hold 
the  scheme  together,  except  in  the  loosest  and  most  general 
way,  is  given  up  as  too  troublesome  or  too  confined.  The 
poet  .  .  .  ranges  unrestrained  over  the  whole  field  of 
knowledge  and  imagination.  .  .  .  His  poem  became  an 
elastic  framework,  into  which  he  could  fit  whatever  interested 
him  and  tempted  him  to  composition,  ,  ,  ,  So  multi- 


SPENSER  75 

"arious  is  the  poem,  so  full  of  all  that  he  thought  or  observed 
or  felt  that  it  is  really  a  collection  of  separate  tales  and  alle- 
gories, as  much  as  the  Arabian  Nights.  ...  As  a  whole 
it  is  confusing,  but  we  need  not  treat  it  as  a  whole. 
We  can  hardly  lose  our  way  in  it,  for  there  is  no  way  to  lose. 
.  .  .  It  is  a  wilderness  in  which  we  are  left  to  wander. 
But  there  may  be  interest  and  pleasure  in  a  wilderness,  if  we 
are  prepared  for  the  wandering.  ...  A  vein  of  what  are 
manifestly  contemporary  allusions  breaks  across  the  moral 
drift  of  the  allegory,  with  an  apparently  distinct  yet  obscured 
meaning,  and  one  of  which  it  is  the  work  of  dissertations  to 
find  the  key.  ...  In  Spenser's  allegories  we  are  not 
seldom  at  a  loss  to  make  out  what  and  how  much  was  really 
intended,  amid  a  maze  of  overstrained  analogies  and  over- 
subtle  conceits  and  attempts  to  hinder  a  too  close  and  danger- 
ous identification.  .  .  .  There  is  an  intentional  dislocation 
of  the  parts  of  the  story,  when  they  might  make  it  imprudently 
close  in  its  reflection  of  facts  or  resemblance  in  portraiture. 
His  palaces,  landscapes,  pageants,  feasts,  are  taken 
to  pieces  in  all  their  parts,  and  all  these  parts  are  likened  to 
some  other  things.  The  impression  remains  that  he  wants  a 
due  perception  of  the  absurd,  the  unnatural,  the  unneces- 
sary."— R.  W.  Church. 

"  Like  Homer,  Spenser  is  redundant,  ingenuous,  even 
childish.  He  says  everything,  he  puts  down  reflections  which 
we  have  made  beforehand ;  he  repeats  without  limit  his  grand 
ornamental  epithets.  .  .  .  We  can  see  that  he  beholds 
objects  in  a  beautiful  uniform  light,  with  infinite  detail,  never 
fearing  to  see  his  happy  dream  change  or  disappear. 
His  thought  expands  in  vast  repeated  comparisons,  like  those 
of  the  old  Ionic  poet.  ...  He  develops  all  the  ideas 
which  he  handles.  All  his  phrases  become  periods.  Instead 
of  compressing,  he  expands." — Tame. 

"  One  unpardonable  fault,  the  fault  of  tediousness,  pervades 
the  whole  of  the  '  Faery  Queene. '     We  become  sick  of  cardinal 


76  SPENSER 

virtues  and  deadly  sins,  and  long  for  the  society  of  plain  men 
and  women." — Macaulay. 

"  Dryden  and  many  others  have  complained  of  intricacy 
and  incoherence  in  the  '  Faery  Queene.'  The  admirers  of  the 
poet  should  not  meet  this  complaint  with  a  denial  of  the  fact ; 
for  a  fact  it  is  that  Spenser  does  often  violate  the  plain  laws  of 
space  and  time.  To  maintain  coherence  prolonged  actions 
must  sometimes  be  supposed  to  happen  in  no  time ;  and  per- 
sonages are  sometimes  present  or  absent  as  it  suits  the  poet's 
convenience,  coming  and  going  without  remark.  The  proper 
excuse  is  to  say  the  scene  is  laid  '  in  the  delightful  land  of 
Faery,'  where  perplexity  and  confusion  are  as  natural  as  in  a 
dream.  The  real  explanation  probably  is,  that  the  poet  wrote 
with  great  facility,  and  that  in  <  winging  his  flight  rapidly 
through  the  prescribed  labyrinth  of  sweet  sounds,'  he  some- 
times sang  himself  to  sleep,  and  forgot  exactly  where  he  was. 
'In  description,'  Campbell  says,  'Spenser  exhibits 
nothing  of  the  brief  strokes  and  robust  power  which  char- 
acterize the  very  greatest  poets. '  It  would  perhaps  be  more 
accurate  to  say  that  the  brief  strokes  are  supplemented  and 
their  abrupt,  concentrated  effect  weakened,  or  at  least  soft- 
ened, by  subsequent  diffusion.  .  .  .  The  poet  does  not 
leave  his  conceptions  pent  up  and  struggling  with  repressed 
force,  but  expands  them  into  sublime  images." — William 
Minto. 

"But  now  the  mystic  tale,  that  pleased  of  yore, 
Can  charm  an  understanding  age  no  more ; 
The  long-spun  allegories  fulsome  grow, 
While  the  dull  moral  lies  too  plain  below." 

— Addison. 

"This  poet  contains  great  beauties,  a  sweet  and  harmonious 
versification,  easy  elocution,  a  fine  imagination.  Yet  does  the 
perusal  of  his  work  become  so  tedious  that  one  never  finishes 
k  from  the  mere  pleasure  that  it  affords.  It  soon  becomes  a 
kind  of  task-reading,  and  it  requires  some  effort  and  resolution 


SPENSER  77 

to  carry  us  on  to  the  end  of  his  long  performance.  Spenser 
keeps  his  place  upon  our  shelves,  among  the  classics,  but  is 
seldom  seen  on  the  table,  and  there  is  scarcely  an  one,  if  he 
dare  to  be  ingenuous,  but  will  confess  that,  notwithstanding  all 
the  merit  of  the  poet,  he  affords  an  entertainment  with  which 
the  palate  is  soon  satiated." — Hume. 

"  Superfluousness,  though  eschewed  with  a  fine  instinct  by 
Chaucer  in  some  of  his  latest  works,  where  the  narrative  was 
fullest  of  action  and  character,  abounded  in  his  others ;  and, 
in  spite  of  the  classics,  it  had  not  been  recognized  as  a  fault  in 
Spenser's  time,  when  books  were  still  rare  and  a  writer  thought 
himself  bound  to  pour  out  all  he  felt  and  knew.  It  accorded 
also  with  his  genius,  and  in  him  it  is  not  an  excess  of  weakness 
but  of  will  and  luxury." — Leigh  Hunt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Like  as  the  tide,  that  comes  fro*  the  ocean  mayne, 
Flowes  up  the  Shenan  with  contrarie  forse, 
And,  over-ruling  him  in  his  owne  rayne, 
Drives  backe  the  current  of  his  kindly  course, 
And  makes  it  seeme  to  have  some  other  sourse  ; 
But  when  the  floud  is  spent,  then  backe  againe 
His  borrowed  waters  forst  to  redisbourse, 
He  sends  the  sea  his  owne  with  double  gaine, 
And  tribute  eke  withall  as  to  his  soveraine, 
Thus  did  the  battell  varie  to  and  fro." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

"Whom  when  the  Prince  to  batteil  new  addrest 
And  threatning  high  his  dreadfull  stroke  did  see, 
His  sparkling  blade  about  his  head  he  blest, 
And  smote  off  quite  his  right  leg  by  the  knee, 
That  down  he  tombled  ;  as  an  aged  tree, 
High  growing  on  the  top  of  rocky  clift, 
Whose  hartstrings  with  keene  steel  nigh  hewen  be  ; 
The  mightie  trunck,  halfe  rent  with  ragged  rift, 
Doth  roll  adowne  the  rocks,  and  fall  with  fearefull  drift. 


78  SPENSER 

Or  as  a  Castle  reared  high  and  round, 

By  subtile  engins  and  malitious  slight 

Is  undermined  from  the  lowest  ground, 

And  her  foundation  forst,  and  feebled  quight, 

At  last  dovvne  falles  :  and  with  her  heaped  hight 

Her  hastie  ruin  does  more  heavie  make, 

And  yields  it  selfe  unto  the  victours  might. 

Such  was  the  Gyaunts  fall,  that  seemed  to  shake 

The  stedfast  globe  of  earth,  as  it  for  feare  did  quake." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

"But  if  I  her  like  ought  on  earth  might  read, 
I  would  her  lyken  to  a  crowne  of  lillies, 
Upon  a  virgin  brydes  adorned  head, 
With  roses  dight  and  goolds  and  daffadillies ; 
Or  like  the  circlet  of  a  turtle  true, 
In  which  all  colours  of  the  rainbow  bee  ; 
Or  like  faire  Phebes  garlond  shining  new, 
In  which  all  pure  perfection  one  may  see. 
But  vaine  it  is  to  thinke,  by  paragone 
Of  earthly  things,  to  judge  of  things  divine  ; 
Her  power,  her  mercy,  her  wisdome,  none 
Can  deeme,  but  who  the  Godhead  can  define." 

— Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again. 

8.  Verbal  License. — Spenser  has  been  generally  criti- 
cised for  the  liberties  that  he  takes  with  language.  Craik  de- 
clares that  his  treatment  of  words  on  the  occasion  of  difficulty 
with  his  verse  is  "  like  nothing  that  was  ever  seen  unless  it  might 
be  Hercules  breaking  the  back  of  the  Nemean  lion.  He  gives 
them  any  sense  and  any  shape  that  the  case  may  demand. 
Sometimes  he  merely  alters  a  letter  or  two ;  sometimes  he  twists 
off  the  head  or  tail  of  the  unfortunate  vocable  altogether." 
Ben  Jonson  declared  that,  in  "  affecting  the  ancients,"  Spenser 
"  writ  no  language,"  and  Daniel,  writing  soon  after  his  mas- 
ter, criticises  him  for  singing  "in  aged  accents  and  untimely 
words." 

"He  professes  to  make  language  and  style  suitable  to  the 


SPENSER  79 

'  ragged  and  rustical '  rudeness  of  the  shepherds  whom  he  brings 
on  the  scene,  by  making  it  both  archaic  and  provincial.  He 
found  in  Chaucer  a  store  of  forms  and  words  sufficiently  well 
known  to  be,  with  a  little  help,  intelligible  and  sufficiently 
out  of  common  use  to  give  the  character  of  antiquity  to  a 
poetry  which  employed  them.  And  from  his  sojourn  in  the 
North  he  is  said  to  have  imported  a  certain  number  of  local 
peculiarities  which  would  seem  unfamiliar  and  harsh  in  the 
South.  .  .  .  The  liberty  of  reviving  old  forms,  of  vent- 
uring on  new  and  bold  phrases,  was  rightly  greater  in  his 
time  than  at  a  later  stage  of  the  language.  Many  of  his  words, 
either  invented  or  preserved,  are  happy  additions  ;  some, 
which  have  not  taken  root  in  the  language,  we  may  regret. 
But  it  was  a  liberty  which  he  abused.  He  was  extravagant 
and  unrestrained  in  his  experiments  on  language.  .  .  . 
On  his  own  authority  he  cuts  down,  or  he  alters  a  word,  or 
he  adopts  a  mere  corrupt  pronunciation  to  suit  a  place  in  his 
metre  or  because  he  wants  a  rime.  .  .  .  Precedents 
may  no  doubt  be  found  for  each  one  of  these  sacri- 
fices to  the  necessities  of  metre  or  rime  in  some  one  or  other 
living  dialectic  usage  or  even  in  printed  books. 
But  when  they  are  profusely  used,  as  they  are  in  Spenser,  they 
argue  either  want  of  trouble  or  want  of  resource.  In  his  im- 
patience he  is  reckless  in  making  a  word  he  wants ;  he  is 
reckless  in  making  one  word  do  the  duty  of  another,  inter- 
changing actives  and  passives,  transferring  epithets  from  their 
proper  subjects.  .  .  .  His  own  generation  felt  his  license 
to  be  extreme,  .  .  .  and  to  us,  though  students  of  the 
language  must  always  find  interest  in  the  storehouse  of  ancient 
or  invented  language  to  be  found  in  Spenser,  this  mixture  of 
what  is  obsolete  or  capriciously  new  is  a  bar,  and  not  an  un- 
reasonable one,  to  a  frank  welcome  at  first  acquaintance." 
—R.  W.  Church. 

"Avoiding  the  affectation  of  refinement  [in   the   '  Shep- 
heard's  Calendar ']  he  falls  into  the  opposite  affectation  of  rustic- 


80  SPENSER 

ity ;  and,  by  a  profusion  of  obsolete  and  uncouth  expressions, 
hinders  the  free  movement  of  his  fancy." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"He  loved  'seldseen,  costly'  words  perhaps  too  well,  and 
did  not  always  distinguish  between  mere  strangeness  and  that 
novelty  which  is  so  agreeable  as  to  cheat  us  with  some  charm 
of  seeming  association.  He  chooses  his  language  for  its  rich 
canorousness  rather  than  for  intensity  of  meaning. 
He  forms  English  words  out  of  French  or  Italian  ones,  some- 
times, I  think,  on  a  misapprehension  of  their  true  meaning ; 
nay,  he  sometimes  makes  new  ones  by  unlawfully  grafting  a 
scion  of  Romance  on  a  Teutonic  root.  .  .  .  His  archa- 
isms often  needed  a  glossary  even  in  his  own  day,  but  he 
never  endangers  his  finest  passages  by  any  experiments  of  this 
kind.  .  .  .  Spenser  was  an  epicure  in  language. 
His  innovations  were  by  no  means  always  happy,  as  not  always 
according  with  the  genius  of  the  language,  and  they  have 
therefore  not  prevailed.  .  .  .  His  theory  ...  of 
rescuing  good  archaisms  from  unwarranted  oblivion  was  ex- 
cellent, not  so  his  practice  of  being  archaic  for  the  mere  sake 
of  escaping  from  the  common  and  familiar.  ...  It  may 
readily  be  granted  that  he  sometimes  'hunted  the  letter,'  as 
it  was  called,  out  of  all  cry." — Lowell. 

"A  great  deal  has  been  written  on  this — comments,  at 
least,  of  the  unfavorable  kind,  generally  resolving  themselves 
into  the  undoubtedly  true  remarks  that  Spenser's  dialect  is 
not  the  dialect  of  any  actual  place  or  time,  that  it  is  an  arti- 
ficial '  poetic  diction '  made  up  of  Chaucer  and  of  Northern 
dialect,  of  classicisms  and  of  foreign  words  and  miscellaneous 
archaisms  from  no  matter  where.  No  doubt  it  is.  But 
.  .  .  there  was  no  actually  spoken  or  ordinarily  written 
tongue  in  Spenser's  day  which  could  claim  to  be  '  Queen's 
English.'  ...  In  its  remoteness  without  grotesqueness, 
in  its  lavish  color,  in  its  abundance  of  matter  for  every  kind 
of  cadence  and  sound-effect,  it  is  exactly  suited  to  the  sub- 
ject, the  writer,  and  the  verse." — George  Saintsbury. 


SPENSER  8 1 

"  He  was  probably  seduced  into  a  certain  license  of  ex- 
pression by  the  difficulty  of  filling  up  the  moulds  of  his  com- 
plicated rhymed  stanza  from  the  limited  resources  of  his  na- 
tive language.  .  .  .  Spenser  is  the  poet  of  our  waking 
dreams ;  and  he  has  invented  a  language  of  his  own  for 
them." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  Intentionally  archaic  in  his  diction,  he  heightened  the 
stature  of  English  as  a  poetic  language,  and  raised  it  to  a 
pitch  of  exaltation  which  had  not  previously  been  approached, 
and  has  hardly  since  been  rivalled  by  the  few  noblest  among 
his  successors." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

11  He  is  enamoured  of  it  [the  poetic  land]  even  to  its  very 
language;  he  revives  the  old  words,  the  expressions  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  the  style  of  Chaucer." — Taine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

HOBBINOL. — "  Diggon  Davie  !  I  bidde  her  god  day  ; 
Or  Diggon  her  is,  or  I  missaye." 

DlGGON. — "  Her  was  her,  while  it  was  daye-light, 

But  now  her  is  a  most  wretched  wight ; 

For  day  that  was,  is  wightly  *  past, 

And  now  at  earst  the  dirke  night  doth  hast." 

HOBBINOL. — "  Diggon,  areecie,  who  has  thee  so  dight? 
Never  I  wist  thee  in  so  poore  a  plight. 
Where  is  the  fayre  flock  thou  was  wont  to  leade  ? 
Or  bene  they  chaffred,f  or  a  mischiefe  dead  ? " 

DlGGON.—"  Hobbin,  ah  Hobbin  !  I  curse  the  stounde 

That  ever  I  cast  to  have  lorne  this  grounde  : 

Wel-away  the  while  I  was  so  fonde  J 

To  leave  the  good  that  I  had  in  hande, 

In  hope  of  better  that  was  uncouth  ! 

So  lost  the  Dogge  the  flesh  in  his  mouth. 

*  Quickly.  t  Sold.  J  Foolish. 

6 


82  SPENSER 

My  seely  sheepe  (ah,  seely  sheepe  !) 
That  here  by  there  I  whilome  used  to  keepe, 
All  were  they  lustye,  as  thou  didst  see, 
Bene  all  sterved  with  pyne  and  penuree  ; 
Hardly  my  selfe  escaped  thilke  payne, 
Driven  for  neede  to  come  home  agayne.'* 
—  The  Shtpheards 


*'  The  soveraine  weede  betwixt  two  marbles  playne* 
She  pounded  small,  and  did  in  pieces  bruise  ; 

And  theft  atween  her  lily  handes  twain 

Into  his  wound  the  juice  thereof  did  scruze.     »     ,     , 

And  after  having  searched  the  intuse  deep, 

She  with  her  scarf  did  bind  the  wound,  from  cold  to  keepe." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

"  Ensample  of  his  wondrous  faculty, 

Behold  the  boyling  bathes  in  Cairbadon, 
Which  seeth  with  secret  fire  eternally, 

And  in  their  entrailles,  full  of  quick  brimston, 
Nourish  the  flames  which  they  are  warmed  upon." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

9.  Flattery—  Adulation.—  "  His  disposition  was  soft 
and  yielding;  and,  to  honor  a  friend  or  propitiate  a  patron, 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  make  his  verse  a  vehicle  of  flattery  as 
well  as  of  truth.  .  .  .  The  flattery  of  Queen  Elizabeth  is 
so  gross  that'  the  wonder  is  she  did  not  behead  him  for  irony 
instead  of  pensioning  him  for  panegyric.  The  Queen's  hair 
was  red  ;  and  Spenser,  like  the  other  poets  of  his  day,  is  too 
loyal  to  permit  the  ideal  head  of  beauty  to  wear  any  locks 
but  those  which  are  golden."  —  E.  P.  Whipple. 

"He  had  already  too  well  caught  the  trick  of  flattery  — 
flattery  in  a  degree  almost  inconceivable  to  us  —  which  the 
fashions  of  the  time  and  the  queen's  strange  self-deceit  exacted 
from  the  loyalty  and  enthusiasm  of  Englishmen.  .  .  . 
Under  this  head  comes  a  feature  which  the  '  charity  of  his- 
tory '  may  lead  us  to  treat  as  simple  exaggeration,  but  which 


SPENSER  83 

often  suggests  something  less  pardonable,  in  the  great  char- 
acters, political  or  literary,  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  This  was 
the  gross,  shameless,  lying  flattery  paid  to  the  Queen.  .  .  . 
It  was  no  worship  of  a  secluded  and  distant  object  of  loyalty ; 
the  men  who  thus  flattered  knew  perfectly  well,  often  by 
painful  experience,  what  Elizabeth  was  ;  able,  indeed,  high- 
spirited,  successful,  but  ungrateful  to  her  servants,  capricious, 
vain,  ill-tempered,  unjust,  and  in  her  old  age  ugly.  And 
yet  the  Gloriana  of  the  *  Faery  Queene,'  the  empress  of  all 
nobleness — Belphcebe,  the  Princess  of  all  sweetness  and  beauty, 
Britomart,  the  armed  votaress  of  all  purity,  Mercilla,  the  lady 
of  all  compassion  and  grace,  were  but  the  reflections  of  the 
language  in  which  it  was  then  agreed  upon  by  some  of  the 
greatest  of  Englishmen  to  speak,  and  to  be  supposed  to  think, 
of  the  Queen.  "-R.  IV.  Church. 

"  Thus  [by  the  stipend  bestowed  on  him  by  the  Queen]  he 
procured  the  leisure  to  exercise  his  pen — '  the  vacant  head 
which  verse  demands ' — but  he  incurred  at  the  same  time  the 
obligations  of  a  court  poet,  which,  though  they  may  have  sat 
lightly  on  the  shoulders  of  a  loyal  subject  and  an  humble 
off-shoot  of  the  aristocracy,  by  nature  prone  to  admiration, 
led  him  sometimes  into  servile  compliances  and  into  a  habit 
of  adulation.  .  .  .  And,  speaking  more  generally,  we 
do  not  love  to  see  our  '  sage,  serious  Spenser  '  turn  his  great 
moral  song  into  a  venal  eulogy  of  the  great,  committing,  as  it 
were,  the  ineffectual  simony  of  selling  riches  in  the  Temple  of 
Fame.  But  .  .  .  flattery  was  a  custom  and  almost  a 
necessity  among  poets." — Professor  Child. 

"  The  age  of  Elizabeth  was,  indeed,  '  an  age  of  adulation' 
— and  Edmund  Spenser  Adulator-general  to  the  Court.  But 
blame  him  not  too  severely,  we  implore  you,  for  following 
the  'custom  of  the  time.'  " — Professor  Wilson  [Christopher 
North]. 


84  SPENSER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  thou,  O  fayrest  Princesse  under  sky  ! 

In  this  fayre  mirrhour  maist  behold  thy  face, 

And  thine  own  realmes  in  lond  of  Faery, 

And  in  this  antique  ymage  thy  great  auncestry. 

The  which,  O  !  pardon  me  thus  to  enfold 
In  cover  vele,  and  wrap  in  shadowes  light, 

That  feeble  eyes  your  glory  may  behold, 

Which  ells  could  not  endure  those  beames  bright, 
But  would  bee  dazled  with  exceeding  light." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

"  The  soverayne  beauty  which  I  doo  admyre, 

Witnesse  the  world  how  worthy  to  be  prayzed  ! 
The  light  whereof  hath  kindled  heavenly  fyre 

In  my  fraile  spirit,  by  her  from  basenesse  raysed  ; 

That,  being  now  with  her  huge  brightnesse  dazed, 
Base  thing  I  can  no  more  endure  to  view  : 

But,  looking  still  on  her  I  stand  amazed 
At  wondrous  sight  of  so  celestiall  hew. 

So,  when  my  toung  would  speak  her  praises  dew, 
It  stopped  is  with  thoughts  astonishment ; 

And,  when  my  pen  would  write  her  titles  true, 
It  ravisht  is  with  fancies  wonderment  ; 

Yet  in  my  hart  I  then  both  speake  and  write 

The  wonder  that  my  wit  cannot  endite." 

— Amoretti,  or  Sonnets. 

"  In  the  highest  place, 
Urania  [Countess  of  Pembroke],  sister  unto  Astrofell, 

In  whose  brave  mynd,  as  in  a  golden  cofer, 

All  heavenly  gifts  and  riches  locked  are  ; 

More  rich  than  pearles  of  Ynd,  or  gold  of  Opher, 

And  in  her  sex  more  wonderfull  and  rare. 
Ne  lesse  praise  worthie  I  Theana  [Countess  of  Warwick]  read, 

Whose  goodly  beames  though  they  be  overr-dight 
With  mourning  stole  of  carefull  wydowhead, 

Yet  through  that  darksome  vale  do  glister  bright ; 


SPENSER  85 

She  is  the  well  of  bountie  and  brave  mynd, 
Excelling  most  in  glorie  and  great  light  : 

She  is  the  ornament  of  womankind, 

And  courts  chief  garlond  with  all  vertues  dight." 

—  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Againe. 

10.  Pictorial  Power. — "  Nothing  else  [than  the  Spen- 
serian stanza]  could  adapt  itself  so  perfectly  to  the  endless 
series  of  vignettes  and  dissolving  views  which  the  poet  delights 
in  giving.  .  .  .  The  endless,  various,  brightly-colored, 
softly  and  yet  distinctly  outlined  pictures  rise  and  pass  before 
the  eyes  and  vanish  without  a  break,  without  a  jar,  softer  than 
sleep  and  as  continuous,  gayer  than  the  rainbow  and  as  un- 
discoverably  connected  with  any  obvious  cause." — George 
Saintsbury. 

"It  was  this  wondrous  and  various  troop  of  ideal  shapes, 
palpable  to  his  own  eye  and  domesticated  in  his  own  heart, 
that  he  sent  forth,  in  an  endless  succession  of  pictures,  through 
the  magical  pages  of  the  '  Faery  Queene.'  " — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"He  so  bordered  it  [the  'Faery  Queene']  with  bright- 
colored  fancies,  he  so  often  filled  whole  pages  and  crowded 
the  text  hard  in  others  with  the  gay  frolics  of  his  pencil, 
that,  as  in  the  Grimani  missal,  the  holy  function  of  the  book 
is  forgotten  in  the  ecstasy  of  its  adornment.  .  .  .  The 
true  use  of  him  is  as  a  gallery  of  pictures  which  we  visit  as  the 
mood  takes  us,  and  where  we  spend  an  hour  or  two  at  a  time, 
long  enough  to  sweeten  our  perceptions,  not  so  long  as  to 
clog  them." — Lowell. 

"  We  shall  nowhere  find  more  airy  and  expansive  images  of 
visionary  things,  a  sweeter  tone  of  sentiment,  or  a  finer  flush 
in  the  colors  of  language  than  in  this  Rubens  of  English 
poetry . " — Thomas  Campbell. 

"Is  it  possible  to  refuse  credence  to  a  man  who  paints 
things  for  us  with  such  accurate  details  and  in  such  lovely 
colors?  Here  with  a  dash  of  his  pen  he  describes  a  forest  for 
you;  and  are  you  not  instantly  in  it  with  him?  Beech  trees 


86  SPENSER 

with  their  silvery  stems ;  '  loftie  trees  iclad  with  sommer's 
pride,  did  spred  so  broad  that  heaven's  light  did  hide;'  rays 
of  light  tremble  on  the  bark  and  shine  on  the  ground,  on. 
the  reddening  ferns  and  low  bushes,  which,  suddenly  smitten 
with  the  luminous  track,  glisten  and  glimmer.  Footsteps  are 
scarcely  heard  on  the  thick  beds  of  heaped  leaves  ;  and  at  dis- 
tant intervals,  on  the  tall  herbage,  drops  of  dew  are  sparkling. 
.  .  .  At  every  bend  in  the  alley,  at  every  change  of  light, 
a  stanza,  a  word  reveals  a  landscape  or  an  apparition.  It  is 
morning,  the  white  dawn  gleams  faintly  through  the  trees ; 
bluish  vapors  veil  the  horizon,  and  vanish  in  the  smiling  air ; 
the  springs  tremble  and  murmur  faintly  amongst  the  mosses, 
and  on  high  the  poplar  leaves  begin  to  stir  and  flutter  like 
the  wings  of  butterflies.  ...  In  every  book  we  see 
strange  processions  pass  by,  allegorical  and  picturesque  shows, 
like  those  which  were  then  displayed  at  the  courts  of  princes ; 
now  a  masquerade  of  Cupid,  now  of  the  Rivers,  now  of  the 
Months,  now  of  the  Vices.  .  .  .  Here  are  finished  pict- 
ures, true  and  complete,  composed  with  a  painter's  feeling, 
with  choice  of  tints  and  outlines ;  our  eyes  are  delighted  by 
them.  .  .  .  The  poet,  here  and  throughout,  is  a  colorist 
and  an  architect." — Taine. 

"I  think  that  if  Spenser  had  not  been  a  great  poet  he 
would  have  been  a  great  painter,  and  in  that  case  there  is 
ground  for  believing  that  England  would,  have  possessed — 
and  in  the  person  of  one  man — her  Claude,  her  Annibal 
Caracci,  her  Correggio,  her  Titian,  her  Rembrandt,  perhaps 
even  her  Raphael.  I  suspect  that  if  Spenser's  history  were 
better  known  we  should  find  that  he  was  a  passionate  student 
of  pictures,  a  haunter  of  the  collections  of  his  friends,  Essex 
and  Leicester.  .  .  .  Spenser  emulated  the  Raphaels  and 
Titians  in  a  profusion  of  pictures,  many  of  which  are  here 
taken  from  their  walls.  They  give  the  poet's  poet  a  claim  to 
a  new  title — that  of  Poet  of  the  Painters." — Leigh  Hunt. 

"In  reading  his  descriptions,  one  can  hardly  avoid  being 


SPENSER  87 

reminded  of  Rubens'  allegorical  pictures.  .  .  .  Nobody 
but  Rubens  could  have  painted  the  fancy  of  Spenser  ;  and  he 
could  not  have  given  the  sentiment,  the  airy  dream  that 
hovers  over  it." — William  Hazlitt. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  little  lowly  hermitage  it  was, 

Downe  in  a  dale,  hard  by  a  forests  side, 
Far  from  resort  of  people  that  did  pas 

In  traveill  to  and  froe ;  a  little  wyde 

There  was  an  holy  chappell  edifyde, 
Wherein  the  hermite  dewly  wont  to  say 

His  holy  thinges  each  morne  and  eventyde 
Thereby  a  christall  streame  did  gently  play, 
Which  from  a  sacred  fountaine  welled  forth  alway." 

—  The  Faery  Queene. 

* '  Soone  after  this  I  saw  on  th'  other  side, 

A  curious  Coffer  made  of  Heben  wood, 
That  in  it  did  most  precious  treasure  hide, 

Exceeding  all  this  baser  worldes  good  : 
Yet  through  the  overflowing  of  the  flood 

It  almost  drowned  was,  and  done  to  nought, 

That  sight  thereof  much  griev'd  my  pensive  thought. 

At  length,  when  most  in  perill  it  was  brought, 
Two  Angels,  downe  descending  with  swift  flight, 

Out  of  the  swelling  streame  it  lightly  caught, 
And  twixt  their  blessed  armes  it  carried  quight 
Above  the  reach  of  anie  living  sight : 

So  now  it  is  transform'd  into  that  starre, 

In  which  all  heavenly  treasures  locked  are." 

—  The  Ruines  of  Time. 

"  Here  also  playing  on  the  grassy  greene, 

Woodgods  and  Satyres  and  swift  Dryades, 
With  many  fairies  oft  were  dauncing  scene. 
Not  so  much  did  Dan  Orpheus  represse 


88  SPENSER 

The  streames  of  Hebrus  with  his  songs,  I  weene, 

As  that  faire  troupe  of  woodie  goddesses 
Staied  thee,  (O  Peneus  ! )  powring  foorth  to  thee, 
From  cheereful  lookes  great  mirth  and  gladsome  glee. 

The  verie  nature  of  the  place,  resounding 
With  gentle  murmure  of  the  breathing  ayre, 

A  pleasant  bowre  with  all  delight  abounding 
In  the  fresh  shadowe  did  for  them  prepayre, 

To  rest  their  limbs  with  wearines  redounding. 

For  first  the  high  palme  trees  with  braunches  faire 

Out  of  the  lowly  vallies  did  arise, 

And  shoote  up  their  heads  into  the  skyes." 

—  Virgils  Gnat. 


MILTON,   1608-1674. 

Biographical  Outline. — John  Milton,  born  December 
9,  1608,  in  Bread  Street,  Cheapside,  London;  father  a  scriv- 
ener— a  man  of  scholarly  and  musical  attainments;  Milton  is 
first  taught  by  a  private  tutor,  one  Thomas  Young ;  he  enters 
St.  Paul's  School  not  later  than  1620  ;  is  passionately  devoted 
to  study,  reading  till  midnight  regularly,  while  yet  a  child, 
and  thus  early  injuring  his  eyesight ;  he  learns  Latin,  Greek, 
French,  Italian,  and  some  Hebrew  ;  is  a  poet  at  ten,  and  is  de- 
voted to  Spenser's  "  Faery  Queene;  "  he  writes  two  paraphrases 
of  the  Psalms  before  he  is  fifteen ;  enters  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge,  February  12,  1624-25,  as  a  pensioner,  and  is 
matriculated  on  the  pth  of  the  following  April ;  he  keeps  every 
term  at  Cambridge,  taking  the  degree  of  A.B.  in  March,  1629, 
and  A.M.  in  July,  1632  ;  he  is  harshly  treated  (tradition  says 
whipped)  by  his  tutor,  one  Chappel ;  is  highly  respected  at 
the  university  for  his  scholarship ;  corresponds  in  Latin  with 
his  friends  Diodati,  Young,  and  Gill,  while  at  Cambridge ; 
writes  several  Latin  poems  and  "  Prolusiones  Oratories  "  (pub- 
lished in  1674)  as  college  exercises;  writes  his  ode  "On  the 
Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity"  at  Christmas,  1629,  and  his 
sonnet  to  Shakespeare  in  1630  ;  expresses  scorn  for  the  dra- 
matic performances  seen  at  Cambridge,  the  narrow  theological 
studies  of  his  fellows,  and  their  ignorance  of  philosophy;  is 
nicknamed  "  the  lady  "  at  college  because  of  his  long,  flowing 
locks,  his  personal  beauty,  and  his  sensitiveness ;  becomes  a 
good  fencer,  but  holds  himself  austerely  aloof  from  most 
student  society  ;  develops  great  hostility  to  scholasticism. 

Even  while  at  Cambridge  Milton  already  considered  himself 
as  dedicated  to  the  utterance  of  great  thoughts  and  to  the 

89 


90  MILTON 

strictest  chastity,  on  the  ground  that  "he  who  would  write 
well  hereafter  in  laudable  things  ought  himself  to  be  a  true 
poem;"  Milton  is  educated  with  a  view  to  taking  holy 
orders,  but,  on  leaving  Cambridge,  he  decides  to  postpone 
(but  not  to  abandon)  that  course ;  he  is  alienated  from  the 
Church  by  the  intolerant  policy  of  Laud ;  he  soon  decides  to 
devote  himself  exclusively  to  literature,  and  settles  with  his 
father  at  Horton,  in  Buckinghamshire,  twelve  miles  from 
London,  where  he  resides  from  1632  to  1638;  while  at  Hor- 
ton, Milton  visits  London  frequently,  to  obtain  instruction  in 
music  and  mathematics,  and  writes  his  "  L1  Allegro  "  and 
' '  // Penseroso  ;  "  he  writes  also  his  masque  ' '  Arcades, ' '  for  the 
Countess-dowager  of  Derby,  and  "  Comus  "  for  the  Earl  of 
Bridgewater  (performed  at  Ludlow  Castle  in  September,  1634, 
and  published  by  Milton's  musical  collaborator,  Henry  Lawes, 
without  acknowledging  Milton's  authorship)  ;  Milton  writes 
"  Lycidas  "  in  November,  1637,  on  the  death  of  his  friend 
Edward  King. 

He  starts  in  April,  1638,  on  a  Continental  tour,  taking  a 
servant  and  being  liberally  supplied  with  money  by  his  father; 
he  makes  brief  visits  to  Paris,  Nice,  Genoa,  Leghorn,  and  Pisa, 
and  spends  two  months  in  Florence  and  two  more  in  Rome ; 
thence  to  Naples,  where  he  learns  of  the  threatened  revolution, 
and  determines  to  return  home,  "lest  I  should  be  travelling 
abroad  while  my  countrymen  were  fighting  for  liberty;  "  he 
stops  two  more  months  at  Florence  on  his  way  homeward,  and 
returns  by  way  of  Ferrara,  Bologna,  Venice,  Verona,  Milan, 
and  (probably)  the  Simplon  ;  he  spends  some  time  in  Geneva, 
and  reaches  England  via  Paris  in  July,  1639;  while  abroad 
he  offends  the  Italians  by  his  strict  morality  and  his  outspoken 
attacks  on  popery,  but  is  received  and  honored  by  many  emi- 
nent persons,  including  Grotius,  the  Academicians  of  Florence, 
Galileo,  and  others;  during  his  tour  he  writes  five  Italian 
sonnets  and  a  canzone ;  on  his  return  he  takes  lodgings  in  a 
tailor's  house  in  St.  Pride's  Churchyard,  Londpn,  and  receives 


MILTON  91 

there  his  sister's  two  sons  (aged  eight  and  nine)  as  pupils; 
soon  afterward  he  takes  "  a  pretty  garden-house"  in  Alders- 
gate  Street ;  he  establishes  for  himself  and  his  pupils  a  regime 
of  "hard  study  and  spare  diet,"  allowing  himself  but  one 
"  gaudy  day  "  a  month,  and  carrying  out,  with  his  pupils,  the 
methods  of  education  described  in  his  tractate  on  that  subject; 
in  1643  he  takes  more  pupils,  and  writes  his  Latin  idyll  "  Epi- 
taphium  Damonis;  "  he  sketches  the  plan  of  a  poem  on  Arthur, 
draws  up  a  list  of  ninety-nine  subjects  for  other  poems,  and 
already  contemplates  a  poem  on  "  Paradise  Lost ;  "  he  enters 
political  discussion  by  publishing,  anonymously,  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1641,  three  pamphlets — "  Of  Reformation  Touching 
Church  Discipline  in  England,"  "  Prelatical  Episcopacy," 
and  "Animadversions  upon  the  Remonstrance  Defence,"  all 
three  being  vehement  attacks  on  the  episcopacy  and  scathing 
replies  to  the  pleas  of  its  adherents. 

In  February,  1641-42,  Milton  publishes  under  his  own 
name  "The  Reason  of  Church  Government  Urged  Against 
Prelacy;  "  in  April,  1642,  he  publishes  his  "Apology,"  de- 
fending himself  against  a  slanderous  attack  by  Bishop  Hall  and 
replying  most  vehemently  in  kind ;  he  declines  to  enter  the 
army  at  the  outbreak  of  the  civil  war  in  1642,  on  the  ground 
that  his  mind  is  stronger  than  his  body,  and  is  therefore  more 
useful  to  the  cause  of  liberty;  on  May  21,  1643,  after  a  sur- 
prisingly short  courtship,  Milton  marries  Mary  Powell,  aged 
seventeen,  daughter  of  a  Cavalier  landholder,  residing  at 
Forest  Hill,  Oxfordshire,  who  had  long  owed  Milton  a  debt  of 
^312  ;  soon  afterward,  Milton's  father,  driven  by  the  Royal- 
ists from  his  home  at  Reading,  comes  to  live  with  Milton  ; 
Milton's  wife  soon  becomes  dissatisfied  with  the  dulness  of  his 
home  and  the  crying  of  his  oft-beaten  pupils,  and  Milton 
finds  his  wife  stupid ;  so  she  returns  to  her  father  after  a 
month's  trial  of  "  a  philosophical  life,"  promising  to  return 
at  the  ensuing  Michaelmas ;  she  refuses  to  return ;  Milton's 
messenger  is  uncivilly  treated  by  her  family,  and  then  (within 


92  MILTON 

three  months  of  his  marriage)  Milton  writes  his  tractate  on 
"The  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Divorce,"  in  which  he 
justifies  divorce  on  the  ground  of  incompatibility  or  of  mutual 
consent,  especially  if  there  be  no  children,  and  proposes 
sweeping  changes  in  the  marriagelaws ;  the  tractate  makes 
him  notorious,  and  he  is  bitterly  attacked,  especially  after  his 
second  and  acknowledged  edition  of  the  tractate  in  February, 
1643-44 ;  he  publishes  a  second  pamphlet  on  divorce  in  July, 
1644  ;  influenced  by  the  demand  that  his  books  be  burned 
and  by  the  threat  of  prosecution  because  he  had  not  obtained 
a  proper  license  from  the  Stationers'  Company,  Milton  writes 
his  "  Areopagitica"  published  November  24,  1644,  and  gen- 
erally acknowledged  to  be  the  best  of  his  prose  works;  he  pub- 
lishes two  more  pamphlets  on  divorce  in  1644-45,  an(^  Pro~ 
poses  to  apply  his  principles  by  marrying  the  daughter  of  one 
Dr.  Davis,  a  lady  immortalized  in  Milton's  sonnet  to  "Lady 
Margaret ;  "  meantime  his  wife's  parents  lose  their  property, 
and  she  begs  his  pardon  and  asks  to  be  received  again  ;  Milton 
reluctantly  consents,  and  they  take  a  house  in  the  Barbican 
(a  street  near  Aldersgate  Street)  large  enough  to  accommodate 
his  increasing  number  of  pupils ;  by  Mary  Powell,  Milton  has 
four  children:  Anne,  Mary,  John  (who  died  in  infancy),  and 
Deborah;  Mrs.  Milton  died  in  1652. 

Milton  publishes  the  first  collected  edition  of  his  poems  in 
1645,  placing  the  Latin  and  the  English  verses  on  separate 
pages ;  his  pupils  increase  in  number,  and  include  several  sons 
of  prominent  families;  in  the  autumn  of  1647  Milton  removes 
to  a  house  in  High  Holborn  and  gives  up  teaching;  it  is  sup- 
posed that  he  inherited  a  competency  from  his  father,  who 
died  in  March,  1646-47;  in  his  sonnet  to  Fairfax  and  in 
other  writings  he  expresses  deep  sympathy  with  the  Puritan 
cause ;  he  writes  paraphrases  of  seventeen  of  the  Psalms  and  a 
"History  of  Britain;"  immediately  after  the  execution  of 
Charles  I.,  he  publishes  a  pamphlet  on  "  The  Tenure  of  Kings 
and  Magistrates,"  and  is  consequently  invited  to  become  Latin 


MILTON  93 

Secretary  to  the  Council  of  State  ;  he  accepts,  and  takes  office 
March  15,  1648-49,  at  a  salary  of  about  ^£730  a  year;  his 
duties  are  to  translate  the  foreign  despatches  of  the  govern- 
ment into  dignified  Latin,  to  examine  papers  found  on  sus- 
pected persons,  and  to  act  as  a  licenser  of  books;  he  is  directed 
by  the  government  to  answer  the  "  Eikon  Basilike"  a  book 
then  popularly  supposed  to  have  been  written  by  Charles  I.,  in 
defence  of  his  character  and  position,  but  really  written  by  the 
Bishop  of  Exeter  ;  Milton  publishes  his  answer  October  6, 
1649,  under  the  title  ' '  Eikonoklastes, "  of  which  a  French 
translation  is  ordered  made  by  the  Council  of  State ;  Milton 
is  ordered  by  the  Council,  in  January,  1650,  to  reply  to  Sal- 
masius,  a  professor  at  Leyden — "  a  man  of  enormous  reading 
and  no  judgment" — whom  the  Scottish  Presbyterians  had 
invited  to  write  in  defence  of  their  theological  and  politi- 
cal position,  and  who  had  accordingly  published,  in  1649,  the 
" Defensio Regio pro  Carolo  //"  Milton's  reply,  "ProPopulo 
Anglicano  Defensio  "  appears  in  March,  1650,  and  he  refuses 
;£ioo  voted  him  by  the  Council  as  payment  for  the  work; 
he  completes  the  destruction  of  his  eyesight  by  overwork  on  his 
"  Defence  ;  "  in  March,  1652;  he  is  attacked  with  gross  per- 
sonal abuse  by  one  Peter  du  Moulin  in  a  book  entitled  "Regii 
Sanguinis  Clamor  ad  Ccelum"  dedicated  to  Alexander  More, 
formerly  professor  of  Greek  at  Geneva,  and  attributed  to  More 
by  Milton ;  he  is  ordered  by  the  Council  to  reply  to  the 
"  Clamor,'"  and  publishes  his  answer  in  May,  1654,  under  the 
title  t(  Defensio  Secunda,"  a  book  full  of  savage  abuse,  but 
containing,  also,  valuable  autobiographical  passages  and  an 
apostrophe  to  Cromwell ;  More  replies,  denying  the  author- 
ship of  the  "  Clamor,"  and  Milton  writes  a  third  book,  "  Pro 
Se  Defensio,"  in  August,  1655. 

While  Latin  secretary  he  occupies  for  a  time  chambers  at 
Whitehall;  later  he  removes  to  another  ''pretty  garden-house," 
afterward  19  York  Street,  subsequently  occupied  successively 
by  Bentham,  James  Mill,  and  Hazlitt,  and  demolished  in 


94  MILTON 

1877  ;  he  lives  here  till  the  Restoration  ;  he  is  assisted  in  his 
duties  as  secretary  by  Andrew  Marvell  and  others;  in  1655, 
apparently  because  of  his  blindness,  Milton's  salary  is  reduced 
to  ^150  a  year,  which  was  to  be  paid  during  his  life,  and  was 
soon  increased  to  ^£200;  on  November  12,  1656,  he  marries 
Catherine  Woodcock,  by  whom  he  has  one  child,  but  mother 
and  child  die  in  February,  1658  ;  Milton  is  said  to  have  had  an 
allowance  first  from  Parliament  and  afterward  from  Cromwell 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  ''weekly  table"  for  the  entertain- 
ment of  eminent  foreigners  who  came  to  England  especially 
to  see  him;  in  1659  he  publishes  two  pamphlets  favoring 
a  purely  voluntary  ecclesiastical  system,  and  in  1660  one 
proposing  that  Parliament  make  itself  perpetual;  in  April, 
1660,  he  writes  "  Brief  Notes,"  attacking  a  royalist  sermon  ; 
at  the  Restoration  Milton  conceals  himself  in  a  friend's  house 
in  Bartholomew  Close;  on  June  16,  1660,  it  is  ordered  by 
the  Commons  that  his  "Pro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio"  be 
burned  by  the  common  hangman  and  that  he  be  indicted  and 
taken  into  custody ;  he  is  arrested  during  the  summer,  but  is 
ordered  released  at  the  next  session  on  the  payment  of  fees 
amounting  to  ^150;  the  Indemnity  Act  frees  him  from  all 
legal  consequences  of  his  actions;  the  lenient  treatment  of 
Milton  was  probably  due  to  the  efforts  of  his  friends  Marvell 
and  D'Avenant,  for  the  latter  of  whom  he  had  formerly  en- 
treated when  D'Avenant  was  in  danger  of  execution;  on  re- 
gaining his  liberty,  Milton  takes  a  house  in  Holborn,  and  soon 
afterward  removes  to  Jewett  Street. 

By  the  changes  attendant  on  the  Restoration  his  income  is 
reduced  from  ^500  to  about  ^200  a  year  ;  Mrs.  Powell, 
mother  of  Milton's  first  wife,  attempts  to  obtain  some  of  his 
property,  and  apparently  succeeds  in  part;  on  February  24, 
1662-63,  he  marries  Elizabeth  Minshull,  and  soon  afterward 
removes  to  a  small  house  with  a  garden,  in  Artillery  Walk, 
Bunhill  Fields,  where  he  resides  till  death,  if  we  except  a  re- 
ported short  sojourn  as  a  lodger  in  the  house  of  the  bookseller 


MILTOtf  95 

Millington  ;  during  the  plague  of  1665  he  retires  to  Chalfont 
St.  Giles,  where  "  a  pretty  box  "  was  taken  for  him  by  the 
Quaker,  Thomas  Ellwood  ;  Ell  wood  had  previously  formed  a 
friendship  with  Milton,  had  read  Latin  books  to  him,  received 
from  him  in  the  "  box "  at  Chalfont  the  manuscript  of 
"Paradise  Lost,"  and  suggested  a  poem  on  "Paradise  Re- 
gained ;  "  the  house  at  Chalfont  is  still  preserved  (1898)  as  a 
public  memorial  of  Milton;  he  begins  "Paradise  Lost"  in 
1658  and  finishes  it  in  1663  ;  he  loses  his  house  in  Bread  Street 
(inherited  from  his  father)  in  the  great  fire  of  1666;  on  April 
27,  1667,  Milton  sells  the  copyright  of  "Paradise  Lost"  to 
Samuel  Simmons,  the  terms  being  that  Milton  is  to  receive 
^5  down  and  ^5  additional  for  each  of  the  first  three  editions 
of  not  more  than  1,500  copies  each;  he  receives  his  second 
^5  in  April,  1669,  and  these  £10  are  all  he  ever  received 
personally  for  "Paradise  Lost;"  in  1680  Milton's  widow 
sells  to  Simmons  a  perpetual  copyright  of  the  book  for  ^8 ; 
4,500  copies  were  sold  by  1688 ;  Dryden  first  appreciated  its 
value,  saying  of  Milton  :  "  This  man  cuts  us  all  out,  and  the 
ancients,  too  ; "  with  Milton's  permission,  Dryden  puts  "  Para- 
dise Lost  "  into  a  drama  in  rhyme,  under  the  title  "A  Heroick 
Opera,"  published  in  1674;  Milton  is  much  visited,  in  his 
later  years,  by  foreigners  and  men  of  rank  ;  "  Paradise  Lost  " 
is  translated  into  German  and  into  Latin  in  1682;  Milton 
publishes  "  Paradise  Regained  "  and  "  Samson  Agonistes  "  to- 
gether in  1671.  and  could  never  bear  to  hear  "  Paradise  Re- 
gained "  pronounced  inferior  to  his  first  epic;  in  1669  he 
publishes  his  Latin  grammar  and  his  "History  of  Britain," 
written  long  before  ;  in  1673  he  puts  forth  a  new  edition  of  his 
early  poems ;  he  suffers  during  his  last  years  from  the  gout  and 
from  unpleasant  domestic  relations ;  he  dies  at  his  house  in 
Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill  Fields,  November  8,  1674,  leaving 
£ i oo  each  to  his  "  undutiful  children,"  and  ^600  to  his 
widow. 


96  MILTON 


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Coleridge,  H.,  "  Essays,"  etc.     London,  1851,  E.  Moxon,  2:    i8-?8. 
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Gilfillan,  G.,  "  Literary  Portraits."  Edinburgh,  1851,  J.  Hogg,  2  :  1-27. 
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54-60. 
Garnett,  R.,  "John  Milton"  (Great  Writers).    London,  1890,  W.  Scott, 

v.  index. 
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303-352. 
Pattison,  M.,  "Milton"  (English  Men  of  Letters).     New  York,  1879, 

Harper,  79. 
Saintsbury,  G.,   "A  History  of  Elizabethan  Literature."     New  York, 

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Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "Essays"  (Micellaneous  Works).     New  York,    1880, 

Harper,  i  :    13-64,  and  v.  index. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Among  My  Books."     Boston,  1891,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  274-276. 
Dowden,  E.,  "  Studies  in  Literature."     London,   1878,   Kegan  Paul  & 

Co.,  88-90. 
Arnold,  M.,  "Essays  in  Criticism"  (Second  Series).     New  York,  1888, 

Macmillan,  56-69. 
DeQuincey,   T.,    "Works."     Edinburgh,    1890,  A.   &  C.    Black,  II  : 

453-473.  and  4:  86-118. 


MILTON  97 

Addison,  J.,  "Works."     London,  1889,  Bell,  3:   176-283. 

Keightly,  F.,  "The  Life,  Opinions,  and  Writings  of  John  Milton." 
London,  1855,  Chapman  &  Hall. 

Johnson,  S.,  "Works"  (Lives  of  the  Poets).  New  York,  1846,  Harp- 
er, 2 :  22-46. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicta. "     New  York,  1887,  Scribner,  2:    1-52. 

Minto,  Wm.,  "English  Prose  Literature. "  Edinburgh,  1876,  Black,  311. 

Masson,  D.,  "Essays,  Biographical  and  Critical."  Cambridge,  1856, 
Macmillan,  37-53. 

Brooke,  S.,  "John  Milton."     New  York,  1879,  Appleton,  112-125. 

Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1883, 
Appleton,  112-125. 

Dawson,  G.,  "Biographical  Lectures."  London,  1886,  Kegan  Paul, 
Trench  &  Co.,  82-88. 

Rice,  A.  T.,  "  Essays  from  North  American  Review"  (Emerson).  New 
York,  1879,  Appleton,  99-122. 

Dowden,  E.,  "  Transcripts  and  Studies."  London,  1888,  Kegan  Paul, 
Trench  &  Co.,  454-473. 

Windsor,  A.  L.,  "Ethica."  London,  1860.  Smith,  Elder  &  Co., 
57-112. 

Browning,  E.  B.,  "Essays  on  the  Poets."  New  York,  1863,  James 
Miller,  192-199. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 194-211. 

Reed,  H.,  "  British  Poets."     Philadelphia,  1857,  Parry  &  Macmillan,  I  : 

199-233. 
Hunt,  L.,  "  Selections  from  English  Poets."    Philadelphia,  1854,  W.  P. 

Hazard,  172. 

Masson,  D.,  "Three  Devils."     London,  1874,  Macmillan,  125-150. 
Philips,  N.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1885, 

Harper,  I  :   293-373. 

Carlyle,  T.,  "Essays."     London,  1869,  Chapman  &  Hall,  2  :  64. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "The  Development  of  English   Literature."     Chicago, 

1884,  Griggs,  i :  472-495- 
Hunt,  T.  W.,  "  English  Prose  and  Prose  Writers."     New  York,  1887, 

Armstrong,  246-264. 
Dennis,  J.,  "  Heroes  of  Literature. "  London,  1883,  Society  for  Promoting 

Christian  Knowledge,  114-147. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  "  Lives  of  Famous  Poets."    London,  1878,  E.  Moxon, 

65-79. 

Dobson,  W.  T.,  "The  Classic  Poets."     London    1879,  Smith,  Elder  & 
Co.,  394-452. 
7 


98  MILTON 

Seeley,  J.  R.,  "  Lectures  and  Essays. "     London,  1870,  Macmillan,  89- 

154. 

Yonge,  C.  D.,  "Three  Centuries  of  English  Literature."  New  York, 
1889,  Appleton,  185-210. 

Graham,  W.,  "Essays."     London,  1868,  Nesbit,  137-180. 

Russell,  W.  C.,  "  The  Book  of  Authors."  London,  n.  d.,  1867,  Warne, 
64-67. 

Hutton,  L.,  "Literary  Landmarks  of  London."  New  York,  1892, 
Harper,  210-216. 

Howitt,  Wm.,  "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Authors."  London, 
1847,  Bentley,  I:  67-104. 

Masson,  D.,  "In  the  Footsteps  of  the  Poets."  New  York,  1893,  Whit- 
taker,  13-105. 

Sterling,  John,  "  Essays  and  Tales."     London,  1848,  Parker,  1 :   73-87. 

Contemporary  Review,  19  :    198-209  (Dowden) ;   22:    427-460  (Bayne). 

Quarterly  Review,  143 :  186-204  and  32  :  442-457  and  63  :  29-61  (J.  H. 
Lord). 

Edinburgh  Review 't  69:  112-121  (Channing);  42  :  304-346  (Macaulay); 
25:  485-501  (Mackintosh). 

Christian  Examiner,  3  :   29-77  (W.  E.  Channing). 

Lit  tell' s  Living  Age,  44:   497-499  (Lamartine). 

British  Quarterly,  29:    185-214(0.  Masson). 

International  Review,  9:    125-135  (H.  C.  Lodge). 

North  British  Reviezu,  16  :  295-335  (D.  Masson). 

Fortnightly  Review,  54:  510-519  (Pollock);  16 :  767-781  (J.  A.  Sy- 
monds). 

The  Nation,  30 :   30-32  (G.  B.  Smith). 

Century  Magazine,  36  :   53-55  (M.  Arnold) ;    14 :   53-55  (M.  Arnold). 

North  American  Review,  47:  56-73  (Emerson);  82:  388-404  (Whit- 
ney); 22:  364-373;  31:  101-103  and  338  and  451-452;  38: 
243-246;  41:  375-382  (W.  E.  Channing);  46:  216-217  (Emer- 
son);  126:  536-543  (D.  Masson) ;  114:  204— (Lowell). 

Fortnightly  Review,  54:    510-520  (Pollock);   22:    767  (J.  A.  Symonds). 

Bibliotheca  Sacra,  4:   251-269  (T.  W.  Hunt). 

Presbyterian  Review,  4:  681-709  (H.  Van  Dyke). 

Eraser's  Magazine,  17:   627-635  (W.  E.  Channing). 

Contemporary  Review,  19:  198-211  (E.  Dowden);  22:  427-460 
(Bayne). 

Macmillan's  Magazine,  31  :  554-556  (J.  C.  Shairp)  and  380-387  (M. 
Pattison) ;  28 :  536-547  (G.  B.  Smith). 


MILTON  99 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Sublimity — Majesty. — "  This  is  the  quality  which 
the  poverty  of  our  language  tries  to  express  by  the  words 
solemnity,  gravity,  majesty,  nobility,  loftiness,  and  which, 
name  it  as  we  may,  we  all  feel  in  reading  '  Paradise  Lost.' 
His  rage,  when  almost  delirious,  is  always  a  Miltonic  rage ; 
it  is -grand,  sublime,  terrible;  mingled  with  the  scurrillities  of 
theological  brawl  are  passages  of  the  noblest  English  ever 
written.  .  .  .  The  elevation  is  communicated  to  us  not 
by  the  dogma  or  deliverance  but  by  the  sympathy.  We  catch 
the  contagion  of  the  poet's  mental  attitude.  Milton's  mind 
was  full  to  overflowing  with  vague  conceptions  of  the  lofty,  the 
vast,  and  the  sublime." — Mark  Patti son. 

"  The  author  seems  to  think  but  in  images,  and  these 
images  are  grand  and  proud  as  his  own  soul.  .  .  .  There 
are  moments  when,  shaking  the  dust  of  argument  from  off  him, 
the  poet  suddenly  bursts  forth  and  carries  us  off  on  the  tor- 
rent of  an  incomparable  eloquence.  It  is  poetic  enthusiasm, 
a  flood  of  images  shed  over  the  dull  and- arid  theme,  a  wing- 
stroke  which  sweeps  us  high  above  piddling  controversy. 
.  .  .  The  poetry  of  Milton  is  the  very  essence  of  poetry. 
There  is  something  indescribably  heroical  and  magnificent 
which  overflows  from  Milton,  even  when  he  is  engaged  in  the 
most  miserable  discussions.  .  .  .  The  eloquence  is  now 
sad,  tender,  and  again  wild  and  tempestuous  as  the  hurricane 
of  heaven." — Edmond  Scherer. 

11  From  one  end  of  '  Paradise  Lost '  to  the  other,  Milton  is, 
in  his  diction  and  rhythm,  constantly  a  great  artist  in  the 
great  style.  ...  In  our  race  are  thousands  of  readers, 
presently  there  will  be  millions,  who  know  not  a  word  of 
Greek  or  Latin,  and  will  never  learn  those  languages.  If  this 
host  of  readers  are  ever  to  gain  any  sense  of  the  power  and 
charm  of  the  great  poets  of  antiquity,  their  way  to  gain  it  is 


IOO  MILTON 

not  through  the  translation  of  the  ancients  but  through  the 
original  poetry  of  Milton,  who  has  the  like  power  and  charm 
because  he  has  the  like  grand  style." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  The  style  is  always  great.  On  the  whole  it  is  the  greatest 
in  the  whole  range  of  English  poetry,  so  great  that  when  once 
we  have  come  to  honor  and  love  it,  it  so  subdues  the  judgment 
that  judgment  can  with  difficulty  do  its  work  with  temperance. 
.  .  .  It  lifts  the  low,  gives  life  to  the  commonplace,  dig- 
nifies even  the  vulgar,  and  makes  us  endure  that  whiqh  is, 
heavy  and  dull.  We  catch  ourselves  admiring  things  not  alto- 
gether worthy  of  admiration  because  the  robe  they  wear  is  so 
royal.  Splendid  is  the  poetry  of  '  Comus.'  Even  when  the 
imagination  in  '  Comus  '  falls  it  is  made  more  remarkable  by 
the  soaring  strength  of  his  loftier  flight  and  by  the  majesty  of 
the  verse.  .  .  .  His  style  is  so  spacious  and  so  majestic. 
There  is  majesty  in  the  conduct  of  thought  and  a 
music  in  the  majesty  which  fills  it  with  solemn  beauty  ;  .  .  . 
and  this  fulfills  the  ultimate  need  of  a  grand  style  in  being  the 
easy  and  necessary  expression  of  the  very  character  and  na- 
ture of  the  man.  .  .  .  The  majesty  and  the  beauty  of 
1  Paradise  Lost '  are  beyond  praise.  . '  .  .  Throughout, 
the  grandeur  of  the  picture  increases  with  the  grandeur  of 
the  thought.  .  .  .  Nothing  can  be  nobler  in  thought 
and  verse  than  Adam's  great  hymn  of  praise." — Stopford 
Brooke. 

"  The  first  two  books  of  <  Paradise  Lost '  are  like  two  massy 
pillars  of  solid  gold.  .  .  .  The  strength  is  equal  to  the 
magnitude  of  the  conception.  ...  It  contains  the  most 
perfect  example  of  mingled  pathos  and  sublimity. 
He  adorns  and  dignifies  his  subject  to  the  utmost :  he  sur- 
rounds it  with  every  possible  association  of  'beauty  or 
grandeur,  whether  moral,  intellectual,  or  physical."-  —  Will- 
iam Hazlitt. 

"  His  name  is  almost  identified  with  sublimity.     He  is,  in 
truth,  the  sublimest  of  men.     He  rises,     .     .     .     by  a  native 


MILTON  IOI 

tendency  and  a  god-like  instinct,  to  the  contemplation  of  ob- 
jects of  grandeur  and  awfulness.  .  .  .  The  grandeur  of 
Milton's  mind  has  thrown  some  shade  over  his  milder  beauties. 
The  first  two  books  of  '  Paradise  Lost '  stand  pre- 
eminent for  sublimity." — W.  E.  Channing. 

"  As  of  old,  he  went  out  of  this  lower  worla  in  search  of 
the  sublime.  .  .  .  The  sublimity  of  Mil  ton's  scenery 
raises  our  mind.  .  .  .  The  sublime  is  born0  into  the  poet. 
.  .  .  In  his  Christian  and  moral  verse  he  aims  at  the  sub- 
lime because  the  sublime  is  the  work  of  enthusiastic  reason." 
— Taine. 

"  Among  Milton's  many  great  attributes,  his  mastery  of 
the  sublime  is  the  one  which  has  probably  received  the  most 
frequent  laudation." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  His  lyrical  poems,  move  they  ever  so  softly,  step  loftily 
and  with  something  of  an  epic  air.  .  .  .  His  epic  is  the 
first  in  sublime  effect." — Mrs.  Browning. 

"  Sublimity  is  the  general  and  prevailing  quality  of  '  Para- 
dise Lost  ' — sublimity  variously  modified,  sometimes  descrip- 
tive, sometimes  argumentative." — Samuel  Johnson. 

"  Milton's  chief  talent,  and  indeed  his  distinguishing  excel- 
lence, lies  in  the  sublimity  of  his  thoughts.  ...  He  has 
made  the  sublimity  of  his  style  equal  to  that  of  his  sentiments. 
As  Milton's  genius  was  wonderfully  turned  to  the  sublime,  his 
subject  is  the  noblest  that  could  have  entered  into  the  thought 
of  man.  ...  I  do  not  know  anything  in  '  Paradise 
Lost '  more  sublime  than  the  description  where  the  Messiah 
is  represented  at  the  head  of  his  angels  as  looking  down  into 
chaos,  calming  its  confusion,  riding  into  the  midst  of  it,  and 
drawing  the  first  outline  of  the  creation.  .  .  .  There  is 
something  sublime  in  this  part  of  '  Paradise  Lost,'  where  the 
author  describes  the  great  period  of  time  filled -with  so  many 
glorious  circumstances. " — Addison. 

"It  is  certain  that  this  author,  when  in  a  happy  mood  and 
employed  on  a  noble  subject,  is  the  most  wonderfully  sublime 


IO2  MILTON 

of  any  poet  in  any  language,  Homer  and  Lucretius  and  Tasso 
not  excepted." — Hume. 

"His  more  elaborate  passages  have  the  multitudinous  roll 
of  thunder." — Lowell. 

".Tfye,  4spe£cl;ies  [in  '  Com  us  ']  must  be  read  as  majestic  so- 
liloquies,.;.>a>id  ,he  who  so  reads  them  will  be  enraptured  with 
their "3JQquenc£,  their  sublimity,  and  their  music." — Ma- 
c -.la-lay.  '  - 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Up  he  rode 

Follow'd  with  acclamation  and  the  sound 
Symphonious  often  thousand  harps  that  tuned 
Angelic  harmonies;  the  earth,  the  air 
Resounded,  thou  remember 'st,  for  thou  heard'st  ; 
The  heavens  and  all  the  constellations  rung, 
The  planets  in  their  station  listening  stood, 
q  While  the  bright  pomp  ascended  jubilant. 
Open,  ye  heavens,  your  living  doors  ;  let  in 
The  great  Creator,  from  His  work  return'd 
Magnificent,  His  six  days'  work,  a  world  : 
Open,  and  henceforth  oft ;  for  God  will  deign 
To  visit  oft  the  dwellings  of  just  men." 

— Paradise  Lost. 

"  Hail,  holy  Light,  offspring  of  Heaven,  first-born, 
Or  of  the  Eternal  coeternal  beam, 
May  I  express  thee  unblamed  ?  since  God  is  light, 
And  never  but  in  unapproached  light 
Dwelt  from  eternity,  dwelt  but  in  thee, 
Bright  effluence  of  bright  essence  increate. 
Or  hear'st  thou  rather,  pure  ethereal  stream, 
Whose  fountain  who  shall  tell  ?     Before  the  Sun, 
Before  the  Heavens  thou  wert,  and  at  the  voice 
Of  God.  as  with  a  mantle,  didst  invest 
The  rising  world  of  waters  dark  and  deep, 
Won  from  the  void  and  formless  infinite." 

— Paradise  Lost. 


MILTON  103 

"  Ring  out  ye  crystal  spheres ! 
Once  bless  our  human  ears, 
(If  ye  have  power  to  touch  our  senses  so) 
And  let  your  silver  chime 
Move  in  melodious  time, 

And  let  the  base  of  Heaven's  deep  organ  blow. 
And  with  your  nine-fold  harmony 
Make  up  full  consort  to  the  angelic  symphony." 

— On  the  Morning  of  Chrisfs  Nativity. 

2.  Harmony — Concord. — "Tennyson  calls  Milton  the 
'  God-gifted  organ-voice  of  England.'  The  voice  of  England 
pealing  in  the  ears  of  all  the  world  for  all  time.  Swept  on 
the  flood  of  those  great  harmonies,  the  mighty  hosts  of  angels 
clash  together  in  heaven -shaking  conflict.  But  it  is  the  same 
full  tide  of  music  which  flows  down  in  sweetest  lingering 
cadence  to  wander  through  the  cool  groves  and  fragrant  val- 
leys of  Paradise.  .  .  .  Both  Milton  and  Tennyson  have 
been  led  by  their  study  of  classic  poets  to  understand  that 
.  .  .  the  best  music  is  made  by  the  concord  rather  than 
the  unison  of  sounds. ' ' — Henry  van  Dyke. 

"  The  truth  is  that  Milton  was  a  harmonist  rather  than  a 
melodist.  .  .  .  He  touched  the  keys  in  the  epical  organ- 
pipes  of  our  various  language  that  have  never  since  felt  the 
strain  of  such  prevailing  breath.  It  was  in  the  larger  move- 
ments of  metre  that  Milton  was  great  and  original." — Lowell. 

"  He  has  not  only  imagery  and  vocabulary  but  the  period, 
the  great  musical  phrase,  a  little  long  .  .  .  but  swaying 
all  with  it,  in  its  superb  undulation." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  Nature  had  endowed  him  in  no  ordinary  degree  with  that 
most  exquisite  of  her  gifts,  the  ear  and  the  passion  for  har- 
mony."— David  Masson. 

"  The  public  has  long  agreed  as  to  the  merit  of  the  most 
remarkable  passages  [of  '  Paradise  Lost '],  the  incomparable 
harmony  of  the  numbers  and  the  excellence  of  that  style,  which 
no  rival  has  been  able  to  equal  and  no  parodist  to  degrade ; 


IO4  MILTON 

which  display  in  their  highest  perfection  the  idiomatic 
powers  of  the  English  tongue,  and  to  which  every  ancient 
and  every  modern  language  has  contributed  something  of 
grace,  of  energy,  or  of  music." — Macaulay. 

"There  is  a  music  in  Milton's  majesty  that  fills  it  with 
solemn  beauty.  The  work  of  the  higher  imagination  is  felt 
as  the  shaping  power  in  the  poem,  as  the  Orphean  music 
which  has  harmonized  and  built  them  into  that  unity  which 
is  the  highest  and  last  demand  of  art.  .  .  .  One  of 
the  charms  of  '  Lycidas  '  is  its  solemn  undertone  rising  like 
a  chant.  .  .  .  The  lines  Milton  gives  to  Paradise — in 
metrical  weight  and  balance  perfect — are  equal  to  the  height 
-of  loveliness  he  wishes  to  hold,  and  rise  at  the  end — when  we 
would  think  music  and  loveliness  could  be  no  more — into 
fuller  beauty  and  more  enchanted  music." — -Stopford  Brooke. 

"  The  sound  of  his  lines  is  moulded  into  the  expression  of 
the  sentiment  almost  of  every  image.  They  rise  or  fall,  pause 
or  hurry  rapidly  on,  with  exquisite  art  but  without  the  least 
trick  or  affectation.  .  .  .  His  verse  floats  up  and  down  as 
if  it  had  wings." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  The  harmony  of  Milton's  verse  depends  greatly  upon 
alliteration.  ...  In  the  melody  of  '  Comus  '  there  is 
youthful  freshness.  .  .  .  Like  Vogel,  he  is  unerringly 
and  unremittingly  harmonious.  .  .  .  Music  is  the  ele- 
ment in  which  his  genius  lives." — -John  Addington  Symonds. 

' '  All  the  treasures  of  sweet  and  solemn  sound  are  at  his 
command.  .  .  .  Words  flow  through  his  poetry  in  a  full 
stream  of  harmony.  .  .  .  This  power  does  not  belong  to 
his  musical  ear  but  to  his  soul.  .  .  .  It  is  the  gift  or  ex- 
ercise of  genius,  which  has  power  to  impress  itself  on  what- 
ever it  touches,  and  finds  or  frames  in  sounds,  motions,  and 
material  forms  correspondences  and  harmonies  with  its  own 
fervid  thoughts  and  feelings." — W.  E.  Channing. 

"  Milton's  mastery  of  the  sublime  has  probably  received 
the  most  frequent  and  most  emphatic  laudation,  but  his 


MILTON  105 

power  over  language,  in  its  beauty  and  majesty,  his  mastery 
of  form  and  of  verse,  its  music  and  loveliness,  its  resources 
and  charms,  dignity,  austerity,  and  awe,  form  the  most 
marked  distinctions  of  Milton." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  Milton's  hymns  rolled  with  the  slowness  of  a  measured 
song  and  the  gravity  of  a  declamation." — Taine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  High  on  a  throne  of  royal  state,  which  far 
Outshone  the  wealth  of  Ormus  and  of  Ind, 
Or  where  the  gorgeous  East,  with  richest  hand, 
Showers  on  her  kings  barbaric  pearl  and  gold, 
Satan  exalted  sat,  by  merit  raised 
To  that  bad  eminence  ;  and  from  despair 
Thus  high  uplifted  beyond  hope,  aspires 
Beyond  thus  high,  insatiate  to  pursue 
Vain  war  with  Heaven,  and  by  success  untaught 
His  proud  imaginations  thus  displayed." 

— Paradise  Lost. 
"  The  oracles  are  dumb, 
No  voice  or  hideous  hum 

Runs  through  the  arched  roof  in  words  deceiving. 
Apollo  from  his  shrine 
Can  no  more  divine 

With  hollow  shriek  the  steep  of  Delphos  leaving. 
No  nightly  trance  or  breathed  spell 
Inspires  the  pale-eyed  priest  from  the  prophetic  cell." 

—  On  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity* 

"  But  let  my  due  feet  never  fail 

To  walk  the  studious  cloister's  pale, 
And  love  the  high  embowed  roof, 
With  antic  pillars  massy  proof 
And  storied  windows  richly  dight, 
Casting  a  dim  religious  light." 

— //  Penseroso. 

3.  Love  of  Natural  Beauty — Picturesqueness. — 

Certain  critics  have  called  Milton  a  poet  of  books  rather  than 


106  MILTON 

of  nature;  but  this  judgment  is  sustained  neither  by  the 
majority  of  commentators  nor  by  his  works.  In  a  letter  ad- 
dressed to  Diodati,  in  1637,  Milton  writes:  "  What  God  has 
resolved  concerning  me,  I  know  not,  but  this  I  know  at 
least — He  has  instilled  into  me  a  vehement  love  of  the  beauti- 
ful. Not  with  so  much  labour,  as  the  fables  have  it,  is  Ceres 
said  to  have  sought  her  daughter  Proserpine  as  I  am  wont  to 
seek  day  and  night  for  this  idea  of  the  beautiful  through  all 
the  forms  and  faces  of  things. ' ' 

"There  is  a  more  potent  and  lasting  charm  in  Milton's 
description  of  the  beautiful  than  in  the  description  of  the  sub- 
lime. The  art  of  landscape  poetry,  I  take  it,  consists  in  this: 
the  choice  and  description  of  such  actual  images  of  external 
nature  as  are  capable  of  being  grouped  and  colored  by  a  domi- 
nant idea  or  feeling.  Of  this  art  the  most  perfect  masters  are 
Milton  and  Tennyson.  .  .  .  Not  less  remarkable  is  the 
identity  of  spirit  in  Tennyson  and  Milton  in  their  delicate 
yet  wholesome  sympathy  with  Nature,  their  perception  of  the 
relation  of  her  moods  and  aspects  to  the  human  heart." 
— Henry  Van  Dyke. 

"His  description  of  nature  shows  a  free  and  bold  hand. 
With  a  few  strong  and  delicate  touches  he  impresses, 
as  it  were,  his  own  mind  on  the  scenes  which  he  would 
describe,  and  kindles  the  imagination  of  the  gifted  reader  to 
clothe  them  with  the  same  radiant  hues  under  which  they 
appeared  to  him.  .  .  .  We  have  thought  so  much  of 
Milton's  strength  and  sublimity  that  we  have  ceased  to  recog- 
nize .  .  .  that  he  .  .  .  is  by  nature  the  supreme 
lover  of  beauty.  ...  No  poems  possess  more  pure  love 
of  beauty  than  '  II  Penseroso'  '  L*  Allegro  '  and  other  of  Mil- 
ton's early  poems." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  He  does  look  at  nature,  but  he  sees  her  through  books. 
Natural  impressions  are  received  from  without,  but  always  in 
those  forms  of  beautiful  speech  in  which  the  poets  of  all  ages 
have  clothed  them.  Milton's  attitude  toward  Nature 


MILTON  IO7 

is  ...  that  of  a  poet  who  feels  its  total  influences  too 
powerfully  to  dissect  it.  He  is  not  concerned  to  register  the 
facts  and  phenomena  of  nature  but  to  convey  the  impressions 
they  make  on  a  sensitive  soul." — Mark  Partisan. 

' 'However  his  poems  are  involved,  Milton  has  always  a 
simple  motive.  And  this  is  one  reason  why  children  as  well  as 
others  understand  and  have  pleasure  in  them.  The  picturesque- 
ness  of  the  scenes,  the  clear-cut  vivid  outlines  of  the  things 
described — and  this  is  also  a  constant  excellence  of  Milton, 
though  he  sometimes  wilfully  spoils  it  by  digression — is  also 
a  source  of  delight  to  young  and  old." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"We  hear  the  pealing  organ,  but  the  incense  on  the  altars  is 
also  there,  and  the  statues  of  the  gods  are  ranged  around.  The 
ear  indeed  predominates  over  the  eye,  because  it  is  more  im- 
mediately affected,  and  because  the  language  of  music  blends 
more  immediately  with  and  forms  a  more  natural  accompani- 
ment to  the  variable  and  indefinite  associations  of  ideas  con- 
veyed by  words.  But  where  the  associations  of  the  imagi- 
nation are  not  the  principal  thing,  the  individual  object  is 
given  by  Milton  with  equal  force  and  beauty.  He  refines  on 
his  descriptions  of  beauty,  loading  sweets  on  sweets  till  the 
sense  aches  with  them.  .  .  .  He  describes  objects  of 
which  he  has  only  read  in  books  with  the  vividness  of  actual 
observation.  He  makes  words  tell  as  pictures." — William 
Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Sabrina  fair, 

Listen  where  thou  art  sitting 
Under  the  glassy,  cool,  translucent  wave, 

In  twisted  braids  of  lilies  knitting 
The  loose  train  of  thy  amber-dropping  hair  ; 
Listen  for  dear  honour's  sake, 
Goddess  of  the  silver  lake  ; 
Listen  and  save, 


108  MILTON 

Listen  and  appear  to  us, 
In  name  of  great  Oceanus  ; 


By  all  the  nymphs  that  nightly  dance 
Upon  thy  streams  with  wily  glance, 
Rise,  rise,  and  heave  thy  rosy  head 
From  thy  coral-paven  bed, 
Till  thou  our  summons  answered  have 
Listen  and  save." — Comus. 

"  On  either  side 

Acanthus  and  each  odorous  bushy  shrub 
Fenced  up  the  verdant  wall ;  each  beauteous  flower, 
Iris  all  hues,  roses,  and  jessamin 

Reared  high  their  flourished  heads  between,  and  wrought 
Mosaic  ;  under  foot  the  violet, 
Crocus,  and  hyacinth  with  rich  inlay 
Broidered  the  ground,  more  coloured  than  with  stone 
Of  costliest  emblem." — Paradise  Lost. 

"  Betwixt  them  lawns  or  level  downs  and  flocks 
Grazing  the  tender  herb  were  interposed, 
Or  palmy  hillock  ;  or  the  flowery  lap 
Of  some  irrigous  valley  spread  her  store, 
Flowers  of  all  hue  and  without  thorn  the  rose  ; 
Another  side,  umbrageous  grots  and  caves 
Of  cool  recess,  o'er  which  the  mantling  vine 
Lays  forth  her  purple  grape  and  creeps 
Luxuriant ;  meanwhile  murmuring  waters  fall 
Down  the  slope  hills  dispersed,  or  in  the  lake, 
That  to  the  fringed  bank  with  myrtle  crowned 
Her  crystal  mirror  holds,  their  streams  unite. 
The  birds  their  quire  apply ;  airs,  vernal  airs, 
Breathing  the  smell  of  field  and  grove,  attune 
The  trembling  leaves." — Paradise  Lost. 

4.  Vastness — Amplitude.— This  quality  is  nearly  re- 
lated to  the  majesty  of  Milton's  style,  already  discussed,  and 
is  continually  found  in  connection  with  it ;  and  yet  the  two 


MILTON  109 

qualities  are  not  identical ;  for  we  may  find  numerous  passages 
where  the  treatment  is  grand  and  sonorous  while  the  element 
of  spaciousness  is  not  present.  On  the  other  hand,  however, 
we  seldom  if  ever  have  spaciousness  without  grandeur. 

11  His  is  the  large  utterance  of  the  early  gods.  ...  He 
showed  from  the  first  that  larger  style  which  was  to  be  his 
peculiar  distinction.  .  .  .  He  loved  phrases  of  towering 
port,  in  which  every  member  dilated  stands  like  Teneriffe  or 
Atlas.  ...  In  reading  '  Paradise  Lost '  one  has  a  feeling 
of  vastness.  You  float  under  an  illimitable  sky,  brimmed  with 
sunshine  or  hung  with  constellations ;  the  abysses  of  space  are 
about  you  ;  you  hear  the  cadenced  surges  of  an  unseen  ocean  ; 
thunder  mutters  around  the  horizon  ;  and  if  the  scene  changes, 
it  is  with  an  elemental  movement  like  the  shifting  of  mighty 
winds.  .  .  .  There  are  no  such  vistas  and  avenues  of 
verse' as  his.  In  reading  '  Paradise  Lost '  one  has  a  feeling  of 
spaciousness  which  no  other  poet  gives.  .  .  .  Whatever  he 
touches  swells  and  towers." — Lowell. 

"  Milton's  delight  was  to  sport  in  the  wide  regions  of  pos- 
sibility ;  reality  was  a  scene  too  narrow  for  his  mind.  He 
sent  his  faculties  out  upon  discovery  into  worlds  where  only 
imagination  can  travel.  .  .  .  His  great  excellence  is  am- 
plitude. ...  He  had  accustomed  his  imagination  to 
unrestrained  indulgence,  and  his  conceptions  therefore  were 
extensive. ' ' — Samuel  Johnson. 

"Milton  needs  the  grand  and  infinite;  he  lavishes  them. 
His  eyes  are  only  content  in  limitless  space,  and  he  produces 
colossuses  to  fill  it.  Such  is  Satan  wallowing  on  the  surges 
of  the  livid  sea.  Milton's  hell  is  vast  and  vague.  .  .  . 
He  wanted  a  great  and  flowing  verse,  an  ample  and  sounding 
strophe,  vast  periods  of  fourteen  and  four-and-twenty  lines. 
.  .  .  His  genius  multiplies  grand  landscapes  and  colossal 
apparitions. " — Taine. 

"  Its  sign  [that  of  Milton's  genius]  is  strength,  but  strength 
seraphic ;  .  .  .  a  power  of  sustained  flight,  of  far-reach- 


I IO  MILTON 

ing  vision,  of  lofty  eloquence,  such  as  belongs  to  the  seraphim 
-alone." — Henry  Van  Dyke. 

"  He  raises  his  images  of  terror  to  a  gigantic  elevation  that 
makes  '  Ossa  like  a  wart.'  "—William  Hazlitt. 

"  No  style,  when  one  has  lived  in  it,  is  so  spacious  and  so 
majestic  a  place  to  walk  in." — Stopford Brooke. 

"His  poetry  reminds  us  of  the  ocean."  —  W.  E.  Channing. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thus  Satan,  talking  to  his  nearest  mate, 
With  head  uplift  above  the  wave,  and  eyes 
That  sparkling  blazed ;  his  other  parts  besides 
Prone  on  the  flood,  extended  long  and  large, 
Lay  floating  many  a  rood ;  in  bulk  as  huge 
As    ... 
That  sea-beast 

Leviathan,  which  God  of  all  his  works 
Created  hugest  that  swim  the  ocean  stream  : 
Him,  haply  slumbering  on  the  Norway  foam, 
The  pilot  of  some  small  night-foundered  skiff 
Deeming  some  island,  oft,  as  seamen  tell, 
With  fixed  anchor  in  his  scaly  rind 
Moors  by  his  side  under  the  lee,  while  night 
Invests  the  sea,  and  wished  morn  delays  : 
So  stretched  out  huge  in  length  the  arch  fiend  lay." 

— Paradise  Lost. 

"  He  scarce  had  ceased,  when  the  superior  fiend 

Was  moving  toward  the  shore  :  his  ponderous  shield, 

Ethereal  temper,  massy,  large,  and  round, 

Behind  him  cast ;  the  broad  circumference 

Hung  on  his  shoulder  like  the  moon,  whose  orb 

Through  optic  glass  the  Tuscan  artist  views 

At  evening  from  the  top  of  Fesole  ; 

His  spear,  to  equal  which  the  tallest  pine, 

Hewn  on  Norwegian  hills  to  be  the  mast 

Of  some  great  Admiral,  were  but  the  wand." 

— Paradise  Lost. 


MILTON  III 

"Thence,  full  of  anguish  driven, 

The  space  of  seven  continued  nights  he  rode 
With  darkness  ;  thrice  the  equinoctial  line 
He  circled  ;  four  times  crossed  the  car  of  night 
From  pole  to  pole,  traversing  each  colure  ; 
On  the  eighth  returned,  and  on  the  coast  averse, 
From  entrance  on  cherubic  watch,  by  stealth 
Found  unsuspected  way." — Paradise  Lost. 

5.  Egoism— Conscious  Inspiration.— Milton  him- 
self spoke  of  his  great  epic  as  "  a  work  not  to  be  raised  from 
the  heat  of  youth  or  the  vapors  of  wine  :  like  that  which 
flows  at  waste  from  the  pen  of  some  vulgar  amourist  or  the 
trencher  fury  of  a  rhyming  parasite,  nor  to  be  obtained  by 
the  invocation  of  Dame  Memory  and  her  siren  daughters,  but 
by  devout  prayer  to  that  eternal  Spirit  who  can  enrich  with 
all  utterance  and  knowledge,  and  sends  out  his  seraphim  with 
the  hallowed  fire  of  His  altar,  to  touch  and  purify  the  lips 
of  whom  He  pleases." 

"  There  is  an  intolerant  egotism  which  identifies  itself 
with  omnipotence,  and  whose  sublimity  is  its  apology ;  there 
is  an  intolerable  egotism  which  subordinates  the  sun  to  the 
watch  in  its  own  fob.  Milton  was  of  the  former  kind.  .  .  - 
I  have  no  manner  of  doubt,  that  he,  like  Dante,  believed  him- 
self divinely  inspired  with  what  he  had  to  utter. 
From  the  first  he  looked  upon  himself  as  a  man  dedicated  and 
set  apart.  .  .  .  Plainly  enough,  here  was  a  man  who  had 
received  something  more  than  episcopal  ordination.  .  .  . 
Milton's  respect  for  himself  and  his  own  mind  and  its  move- 
ments rises  well-nigh  to  veneration." — Lowell. 

11  Connected  with  this  austerity  of  character,  discernible  in 
Milton  even  in  his  youth,  may  be  noted,  also, 
a  haughty  yet  modest  self-esteem  and  consciousness  of  his 
own  powers.  Throughout  all  of  Milton's  works  there  may  be 
discerned  a  vein  of  this  noble  egotism,  this  unbashful  self- 
assertion.  Frequently,  in  arguing  with  an  opponent  or  in 


112  MILTON 

setting  forth  his  own  views  on  any  subject  of  discussion,  he 
passes,  by  a  very  slight  topical  connection,  into  an  account  of 
himself,  his  education,  his  designs,  and  his  relations  to  the 
matter  in  question  ;  in  his  later  years  Milton  evidently  be- 
lieved himself  to  be,  if  not  the  greatest  man  in  England,  at 
least  the  greatest  writer." — David  Masson. 

"  Milton  loves  to  present  to  his  own  imagination  the  glory 
of  his  strength  and  the  greatness  of  his  past  achievements 
and  his  present  afflicted  state.  ...  He  looked  upon  his 
strength  as  something  intrusted  to  him." — Edward  Dowden. 

"He  had  a  lofty  and  steady  confidence  in  himself." 
Samuel  Johnson. 

"  A  sense  of  divine  benediction  runs  through  his  epic  poem 
from  beginning  to  end.',' — Mrs.  Browning. 

"  His  poetry  is  full  of  personal  memories,  and  his  polemi- 
cal works  become  at  times  memories  of  his  life,  passionate 
and  naif  memories,  where  the  writer  reveals  himself  without 
any  disguise." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  '  Comus  '  is  marked  by  more  self-conscious  art  than  any 
poem  of  its  character  which  England  has  yet  known.  .  .  . 
His  later  poems  reveal  his  sustained  purpose  to  write  a  heroic 
poem.  ...  It  [his  style]  reveals  the  man  more  than  the 
thought. " — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  Every  thing  about  him  became  as  it  were  pontifical,  al- 
most sacramental." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  What  other  poet  has  shown  so  sincere  a  sense  of  the 
grandeur  of  his  vocation  and  a  moral  effort  so  sublime  and 
constant  to  make  and  keep  himself  worthy  of  it  ?  " — Matthew 
Arnold. 

11  He  had  girded  himself  up  and,  as  it  were,  sanctified  him- 
self for  this  service  from  his  youth." —  William  Hazlitt. 


MILTON  113 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Or,  if  Sion's  hill 

Delight  thee  more,  and  Siloa's  brook  that  flowed 
Fast  by  the  oracle  of  God,  I  thence 
Invoke  thy  aid  to  my  adventurous  song, 
That  with  no  middle  flight  intends  to  soar 
Above  the  Aonian  mount,  while  it  pursues 
Things  unattempted  yet  in  prose  or  rhyme. 
And  chiefly  Thou,  O  Spirit,  that  dost  prefer 
Before  all  temples  the  upright  heart  and  pure, 
Instruct  me,  for  Thou  knowest ;  Thou  from  the  first 
Wast  present,  and  with  mighty  wings  outspread 
Dove-like  satst  brooding  on  the  vast  abyss, 
And  made  it  pregnant ;  what  in  me  is  dark 
Illumine  ;  what  is  low  raise  and  support ; 
That  to  the  height  of  this  great  argument 
I  may  assert  eternal  Providence, 
And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man." — Paradise  Lost. 

"  So  much  the  rather  thou,  celestial  light, 

Shine  inward,  and  the  mind  through  all  her  powers 
Irradiate  ;  there  plant  eyes  ;  all  mist  from  thence 
Purge  and  disperse,  that  I  may  see  and  tell 
Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight." — Paradise  Lost. 

"  If  answerable  style  I  can  obtain 
Of  my  celestial  patroness,  who  deigns 
Her  nightly  visitation  unimplored, 
And  dictates  to  me  slumbering,  or  inspires 
Easy  my  unpremeditated  verse  ; 
Since  first  this  subject  for  heroic  song 
Pleased  me  long  choosing  and  beginning  late." 

— Paradise  Lost. 

6.  Moral  Elevation — Purity. — Carlyle  has  called  Mil- 
ton "  the  moral  king  of  English  literature."     In  his  second 
"  Defence  of  the  People  of  England  "   Milton  declares,  con- 
cerning his  experience  on  the  Continent :  "  I  again  take  God 
8 


114  MILTON 

to  witness  that  in  all  these  places,  where  so  many  things  are 
considered  lawful,  I  lived  sound  and  untouched  from  all  prof- 
ligacy and  vice,  having  this  thought  perpetually  before  me, 
that  though  I  might  escape  the  eyes  of  men,  I  certainly  could 
not  the  eyes  of  God. ' '  And  later  he  writes  :  "He  who  would 
not  be  frustrate  of  his  hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable 
things,  ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem."  Milton  was  sen- 
suous, as  he  declared  all  poetry  should  be,  but  he  was  never 
sensual.  His  conception  of  the  moral  possibilities  of  poetry 
is  best  expressed  in  his  own  words  :  "  These  [poetic]  abilities, 
wheresoever  they  be  found,  are  the  inspired  gift  of  God,  rarely 
bestowed,  but  yet  to  some  (though  most  abuse)  in  every  na- 
tion ;  and  are  of  power  beside  the  office  of  a  pulpit,  to  im- 
breed  and  cherish  in  a  great  people  the  seeds  of  virtue  and 
public  civility,  to  allay  the  perturbations  of  the  mind  and  set 
the  affections  in  right  tune  ;  to  celebrate  in  glorious  and  lofty 
hymns  the  throne  and  equipage  of  God's  almightiness  and 
what  he  works  and  what  he  suffers  to  be  wrought  with  high 
providence  in  his  church ;  to  sing  the  victorious  agonies  of 
martyrs  and  saints,  the  deeds  and  triumphs  of  just  and  pious 
nations,  doing  valiantly  through  faith  against  the  enemies  of 
Christ." 

"  Milton  consecrated  his  thoughts  as  well  as  his  words. 
He  praised  everywhere  chaste  love,  piety,  generosity, 
heroic  force.  .  .  .  They  [the  Masques]  were  amusements 
for  the  castle  ;  he  made  out  of  them  lectures  on  magnanimity 
and  constancy.  .  .  .  He  was  born  with  the  instinct  of 
noble  things. ' ' —  Taine. 

"  Look  at  the  Lady  in  '  Comus '  !  she  is  the  sweet  embodi- 
ment of  Milton's  youthful  ideal  of  virtue,  clothed  with  the 
fairness  of  opening  womanhood,  armed  with  the  sun-clad  pow- 
er of  chastity.  Darkness  and  danger  cannot  stir  the  constant 
mood  of  her  calm  thoughts  !  Evil  things  have  no  power  upon 
her,  but  shrink  abashed  from  her  presence." — Henry  Van 
Dyke. 


MILTON  1 1  5 

"  Thy  soul  was  like  a  star ;  and  dwelt  apart ; 
Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free, 
So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way, 
In  cheerful  godliness  ;   and  yet  thy  heart 
The  lowliest  duties  on  itself  did  lay." — Wordsworth. 
"  His  sympathy  with  festivities   is  modified  by  his  native 
gravity  and  holiness  to  the  quiet  delight  in  those  beautiful 
things  which  had  in  them  purity  and  temperance. 
The  stately  purity  of  thought  and  life  is  one  of  the  foundations 
of  his  stately  style. ' '  — Stopford  Brooke. 

11  There  are  a  few  characters  which  have  stood  the  closest 
scrutiny  and  the  severest  tests,  which  have  been  tried  in  the 
furnace  and  have  proved  true,  .  .  .  and  which  are 
visibly  stamped  with  the  image  and  superscription  of  the  most 
High.  Of  these  was  Milton.  Certain  high  moral  dispositions 
Milton  had  from  nature  ;  he  sedulously  trained  and  developed 
them  until  they  became  habits  of  great  power.  .  .  .  Mil- 
ton's power  of  style  has  for  its  great  character  elevation,  which 
clearly  comes  in  the  main  from  a  moral  quality  in  him — his 
pureness.  How  high,  clear,  and  splendid  is  his  pureness ; 
and  how  intimately  does  its  might  enter  into  the  voice  of  his 
poetry  !  What  gives  Milton's  professions  such  a  stamp  of  their 
own  is  their  accent  of  absolute  sincerity.  In  this  elevated 
strain  of  moral  pureness  his  life  was  really  pitched  ;  its  strong 
immortal  beauty  passed  into  the  diction  and  rhythm  of  his 
poetry." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  Milton's  every  line  breathes  sanctity  of  thought  and  pure- 
ness  of  manners,  except  when  the  train  of  narration  requires 
the  introduction  of  the  rebellious  spirits,  and  even  then  they 
are  compelled  to  acknowledge  the  subjugation  to  God  in  such 
a  manner  as  excites  reverence  and  confirms  piety." — Samuel 
Johnson. 

"  Milton  stands  erect,  commanding,  still  visible  as  a  man 
among  men,  and  reads  the  laws  of  the  moral  sentiment  to  the 
new-born  race.  He  is  identified  in  the  mind  with  all  select 


Il6  MILTON 

and  holy  images,  with  the  supreme  interests  of  the  human  race. 
.  It  is  the  ardent  aspiration  after  pure  and  noble  life, 
the  aspiration  which  stamps  every  line  he  wrote,  verse  or  prose, 
with  a  dignity  as  of  an  heroic  age.  This  gives  consistency  to 
all  his  utterances." — Mark  Pattison. 

"In  his  long  commerce  with  ancient  and  modern  writers, 
he  was  able  to  preserve  the  native  purity  of  his  soul,  to  form 
a  sublime  ideal  bent  of  purity,  poetry,  and  fame." — Edrnond 
Scherer. 

"  He  reverenced  moral  purity  and  elevation,  ...  as 
the  inspirer  of  the  intellect  and  especially  of  the  higher  efforts 
of  poetry.  His  moral  character  was  as  strongly  marked  as  his 
intellectual,  and  it  may  be  expressed  in  one  word,  magnanim- 
ity."— W.  E.  Charming. 

"  He  had  a  gravity  in  his  temper,  not  melancholy ;  not  till 
the  later  part  of  his  life  sour,  morbid,  or  ill-tempered ;  but 
a  certain  serenity  of  mind — a  mind  not  condescending  to  lit- 
tle things.' ' —  Walter  Bagehot. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  So  dear  to  heaven  is  saintly  chastity 
That  when  a  soul  is  found  sincerely  so, 
A  thousand  liveried  angels  lackey  her, 
Driving  far  off  each  thing  of  sin  and  guilt ; 
And  in  clear  dream  and  solemn  vision, 
Tell  her  of  things  that  no  gross  ear  can  hear ; 
Till  oft  converse  with  heavenly  habitants 
Begins  to  cast  a  beam  on  th'  outward  shape, 
The  unpolluted  temple  of  the  mind, 
And  turn  it  by  degrees  to  the  soul's  essence, 
Till  all  be  made  immortal."—  Comus. 

"  Lady,  that  in  the  prime  of  earliest  youth 
Wisely  hast  shunned  the  broad  way  and  the  green, 
And  with  those  few  art  eminently  seen, 
That  labour  up  the  hill  of  heavenly  truth. 


MILTON  117 

The  better  part,  with  Mary  and  with  Ruth, 
Chosen  thou  hast ;  and  they  that  overween, 
And  at  thy  growing  virtues  fret  their  spleen, 
No  anger  find  in  thee,  but  pity  and  ruth. 

Thy  care  is  fixed,  and  zealously  attends 
To  fill  thy  odorous  lamp  with  deeds  of  light, 
And  hope  that  reaps  not  shame.     Therefore  be  sure 

Thou,  when  the  bridegroom  with  his  feastful  friends 
Passes  to  bliss  at  the  mid-hour  of  night, 
Hast  gained  thy  entrance,  virgin  wise  and  pure." 

—  To  a  Virtuous  Young  Lady. 

"  Servant  of  God,  well  done  !     Well  hast  thou  fought 
The  better  fight,  who  single  hast  maintained 
Against  revolted  multitudes  the  cause 
Of  truth,  in  word  mightier  than  they  in  arms, 
And  for  the  testimony  of  truth  hast  borne 
Universal  reproach  far  worse  to  bear 
Than  violence  ;  for  this  was  all  thy  care — 
To  stand  approved  in  sight  of  God,  though  worlds 
Judged  thee  perverse." — Paradise  Lost. 

7.  Fondness  for  the  Indefinite. — "He  was  fonder 
of  the  vague,  perhaps  I  should  better  say  the  indefinite,  where 
more  is  meant  than  meets  the  ear,  than  any  other  of  our  poets. 
.  .  .  He  produces  his  effects  by  dilating  our  imaginations 
with  an  impalpable  hint  rather  than  by  concentrating  them 
upon  too  precise  particulars.  ...  He  generalizes  always 
instead  of  specifying.  .  .  .  He  is  too  wise  to  hamper 
himself  with  any  statement  for  which  he  can  be  brought  to 
book,  but  wraps  himself  in  a  mist  of  looming  indefiniteness." 
— Lowell. 

"  His  characters  rise  before  our  eyes  like  superhuman  statues ; 
and,  their  far  removal  rendering  vain  our  curious  hands,  pre- 
serves our  admiration  and  their  majesty.  We  rise  further  and 
higher  to  the  origin  of  things,  among  eternal  beings,  to  the 
commencement  of  thought  and  life,  to  the  battle  of  God  in 
this  unknown  world,  where  sentiments  and  existences,  raised 


Il8  MILTON 

above  the  ken  of  man,  elude  his  judgment  and  criticism  to 
command  his  veneration  and  awe." — Taine. 

"The  English  poet  [Milton]  has  never  thought  of  taking 
the  measure  of  Satan.  He  gives  us  merely  a  vague  idea  of  vast 
bulk.  In  one  passage  the  fiend  lies  stretched  out  huge  in 
length  and  floating  many  a  rood,  equal  in  size  to  the  earth- 
born  enemies  of  Jove  or  to  the  sea-monster  which  the  mariner 
mistakes  for  an  island.  .  .  .  Milton  avoids  the  loathsome 
details  [of  Dante]  and  takes  refuge  in  indistinct  but  solemn 
and  tremendous  imagery." — Samuel  Johnson. 

"There  is  no  subject  so  vast  or  so  terrible  as  to  repel  or 
intimidate  him.  .  .  .  The  overpowering  grandeur  of  a 
theme  kindles  and  attracts  him.  .  .  .  An  indefiniteness  in 
the  description  of  Satan's  person  excites  without  shocking  the 
imagination." — W.  E.  Channing. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"A  dungeon  horrible  on  all  sides  round 
As  one  great  furnace  flamed,  yet  from  these  flames 
No  light  but  rather  darkness  visible 
Served  only  to  discover  sights  of  woe, 
Regions  of  sorrow,  doleful  shades." — Paradise  Lost. 

"  Beyond  this  flood  a  frozen  continent 

Lies  dark  and  wild,  beat  with  perpetual  storms 
Of  whirlwind  and  dire  hail,  which  on  firm  land 
Thaws  not,  but  gathers  heap,  and  ruin  seems 
Of  ancient  pile." — Paradise  Lost. 

"  Before  their  eyes  in  sudden  view  appear 
The  secrets  of  the  hoary  deep — a  dark 
Illimitable  ocean,  without  bound, 

Without  dimension  ;  where  length,  breadth,  and  height 
And  time  and  place  are  lost ;  where  eldest  Night 
And  Chaos,  ancestors  of  Nature,  hold 
Eternal  anarchy  amidst  the  noise 
Of  endless  wars,  and  by  confusion  stand." — Paradise  Lost. 


MILTON  119 

8.  Profound  Learning— Intellectuality. — This  en- 
dowment appears  continually  both  in  Milton's  prose  and  in 
his  poetry.  In  his  early  manhood  Milton  writes  to  a  friend  as 
follows  :  "I  who  certainly  have  not  merely  wetted  the  tip  of 
my  lips  in  the  stream  of  these  [the  classical]  languages,  but 
in  proportion  to  my  years  have  swallowed  the  most  copious 
draughts,  can  yet  sometimes  retire  with  avidity  and  delight  to 
feast  on  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  many  others." 

"  His  literature  was  unquestionably  great.  He  read  all  the 
languages  which  are  considered  either  learned  or  polite ;  He- 
brew with  its  two  dialects,  Latin,  Greek,  Italian,  French,  and 
Spanish.  In  Latin  his  skill  was  such  as  places  him  in  the  first 
rank  of  writers  and  critics ;  he  appears  to  have  cultivated 
Italian  with  uncommon  diligence.  .  .  .  When  he  can- 
not raise  wonder  by  the  sublimity  of  his  mind,  he  gives  delight 
by  its  fertility.  .  .  .  He  was  master  of  his  language  in  its 
full  ex  ten  t . ' ' — Samuel  Johnson . 

"The  author  unfolds  the  treasures  of  his  learning,  heaping 
up  the  testimony  of  Scripture,  passages  from  the  fathers,  and 
quotations  from  the  poets,  laying  sacred  and  profane  antiquity 
alike  under  contribution,  and  subtly  discussing  the  sense  of 
this  and  that  Greek  or  Hebrew  term." — Edmond Scherer. 

"Milton's  learning  attends  him  at  every  step;  he  never 
utters  himself  except  through  learned  lips,  in  well-considered 
phrase.  .  .  .  He  is  the  poet  of  the  scholars." — J.  C. 
Shairp. 

"Milton  seems  ambitious  of  letting  us  know,  by  his  excur- 
sions on  free  will  and  predestination  and  his  many  glances 
upon  history,  astronomy,  geography,  and  the  like,  as  well  as 
by  terms  and  phrases  he  sometimes  makes  use  of,  that  he  is 
acquainted  with  the  whole  circle  of  arts  and  sciences." 
— Addison. 

"  He  was  a  profound  scholar,  a  man  of  vast  compass  of 
thought,  imbued  thoroughly  with  all  ancient  and  modern 
learning,  to  master,  to  mould,  to  impregnate  with  his  intel- 


I2O  MILTON 

lectual  power,   his  great   and  various  acquisitions. 
The  very  splendor  of  his  poetic  fame  has  tended  to  obscure 
or  conceal  the  extent  of  his  mind.     .     .     .     Milton  has  that 
universality  which   marks   the   highest  order   of   intellect." 
—  W.  E.  Channing. 

"The  power  of  his  mind  is  stamped  on  every  line.  .  .  . 
We  feel  ourselves  under  the  influence  of  a  mighty  intellect, 
which,  the  nearer  it  approaches  to  others,  becomes  more  dis- 
tinct from  them." — William  Hazlitt. 

"Vast  knowledge,  close  logic,  grand  passion;  these  were 
his  marks.  .  .  .  He  was  eminently  learned,  elegant,  trav- 
elled, philosophic,  and  of  high  worldly  culture  for  the  times. 
.  .  .  The  phrases  in  Milton  are  immense;  page-long  periods 
are  necessary  to  enclose  the  train  of  so  many  linked  arguments 
and  so  many  accumulated  metaphors  around  the  governing 
thought.  ...  In  the  limits  of  a  single  work  are  found 
the  events  and  the  feelings  of  several  centuries  and  of  a  whole 
nation." — Taine. 

"Milton  is  not  a  man  of  the  fields  but  of  books.  His 
life  is  his  study,  and  when  he  steps  abroad  into  the  air  he  car- 
ries his  study  thoughts  with  him." — Mark  Pattison. 

"Milton  and  Tennyson  are  the  most  learned,  the  most 
classical  of  all  English  poets." — Edward  Dowden. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Spot  more  delicious  than  those  gardens  feigned 
Or  of  revived  Adonis,  or  renowned 
Alcinous,  host  of  old  Laertes'  son  ; 
Or  that,  not  mystic,  where  the  sapient  king 
Held  dalliance  with  his  fair  Egyptian  spouse. 

— pleasing  was  his  shape, 
And  lovely  ;  never  since  of  serpent  kind 
Lovelier  ;  not  those  that  in  Illyria  changed 
Hermione  and  Cadmus,  or  the  god 


MILTON  121 

In  Epidaurus  ;  nor  to  which  transformed 
Ammonian  Jove,  or  Capitoline  was  seen  ; 
He  with  Olympias  ;  this  with  her  who  bore 
Scipio  the  height  of  Rome." — Paradise  Lost. 

11  Black,  but  such  as  in  esteem 

Prince  Memnon's  sister  might  beseem, 

Or  that  starred  Ethiop  queen  that  strove 

To  set  her  beauty's  praise  above 

The  sea-nymphs,  and  their  powers  offended  : 

Yet  thou  art  higher  far  descended  ; 

Thee,  bright-haired  Vesta  long  of  yore 

To  solitary  Saturn  bore  ; 

His  daughter  she  (in  Saturn's  reign, 

Such  mixture  was  not  held  a  stain) 

Oft  in  glimmering  bowers  and  glades 

He  met  her,  and  in  secret  shades 

Of  woody  Ida's  inmost  grove, 

While  yet  there  was  no  fear  of  Jove." — //  Penseroso. 

"  Nathless  he  so  endured,  till  on  the  beach 
Of  that  inflamed  sea  he  stood,  and  call'd 
His  legions,  angel  forms,  who  lay  entranced 
Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks 
In  Vallombrosa,  where  the  Etrurian  shades 
High  over-arched  imbower ;  or  scattered  sedge 
Afloat,  when  with  fierce  winds  Orion  armed 
Had  vexed  the  Red  Sea  coast,  whose  waves  o'erthrew 
Busiris  and  his  Memphian  chivalry, 
While  with  perfidious  hatred  they  pursued 
The  sojourners  of  Goshen,  who  beheld 
From  the  safe  shore  their  floating  carcasses." 

— Paradise  Lost. 

9.  Adaptation  of  Sound  to  Sense. — "  I  imagine  that 
there  are  more  perfect  examples  in  Milton  of  musical  expres- 
sion, or  of  an  adaptation  of  the  sound  and  movement  of  the 
verse  to  the  meaning  of  the  passage,  than  in  all  our  other 
writers,  whether  of  rhyme  or  of  blank  verse,  put  together  (with 
the  exception  of  Shakespeare).  .  .  .  Read  any  other 


llJct 


122  MILTON 

blank  verse  except  Milton's — Thompson's,  Young's,  Cowper's, 
Wordsworth's — and  it  will  be  found,  from  the  want  of  this 
same  insight  'into  the  hidden  soul  of  harmony,'  to  be  mere 
lumbering  prose." — William  Hazlitt. 

i(  We  may  be  certain  that  when  so  great  an  artist  in  verse 
as  Milton  was  writing,  lines  which(seem  to  us  unmusical  were 

made  so-*4tb^a  jjurpose r 1.  He  insists  upon  accent 

which  seems  to  us  strangely  put,  in  order  that  he  may  make 
some  particular  thought  or  some  particular  thing  in  his  descrip- 
tion emphatic. " — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  He  was  master  of  his  language  in  its  full  extent ;  and  has 
selected  the  melodious  words  with  such  diligence  that  from 
his  books  alone  the  art  of  English  poetry  might  be  learned." 
— Samuel Johnscn. 

11  Rarely  or  never  was  sense  better  linked  to  sound  than  in 
some  of  the  lines  of  '  Z' Allegro'  and  '  //  Penseroso?  " — W. 
M.  Rossetti. 

11  His  words  are  the  words  of  one  who  made  a  study  of  the 
language,  as  a  poet  studies  language,  searching  its  capacities 
for  the  expression  of  surging  emotion.  Milton  is  the  first 
English  writer  who,  possessing  in  the  ancient  models  a  stand- 
ard of  the  effect  which  could  be  produced  by  the  choice  of 
words,  set  himself  to  the  conscious  study  of  our  native  tongue, 
with  a  firm  faith  in  its  as  yet  undeveloped  powers  as  an  in- 
strument of  thought." — David  Masson. 

"  His  rhythm  is  as  admirable  when  it  is  unusual  as  when  it- 
is  simplest." — Matthew  Arnold. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  chief  the  spacious  hall 

Thick  swarmed,  both  on  the  ground  and  in  the  air, 
Brushed  with  the  hiss  of  rustling  wings.     As  bees 
In  spring  time,  when  the  sun  with  Taurus  rides, 
Pour  forth  their  populous  youth  about  the  hive." 

— Paradise  Lost. 


MILTON  123 

"  Haste  thee,  Nymph,  and  bring  with  thee 
Jest  and  youthful  Jollity, 
Quips  and  Cranks  and  wanton  Wiles, 
Nods  and  Becks  and  wreathed  Smiles, 
Such  as  hang  on  Hebe's  cheek, 
And  love  to  live  in  dimple  sleek  ; 
Sport  that  wrinkled  Care  derides 
And  Laughter,  holding  both  his  sides  ; 
Come  and  trip  it,  as  you  go, 
On  the  light  fantastic  toe."— V Allegro. 

"  The  oracles  are  dumb  ; 
No  voice  or  hideous  hum 

Runs  through  the  arched  roof  in  words  deceiving  ; 
Apollo  from  his  shrine 
Can  no  more  divine, 

With  hollow  shriek  the  steep  of  Delphos  leaving." 

— Hymn  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity. 

"  Meanwhile  welcome  joy  and  feast, 
Midnight  shout  and  revelry, 
Tipsy  dance  and  jollity. 
Braid  your  locks  with  rosy  twine, 
Dropping  odours,  dropping  wine. 
Rigour  now  is  gone  to  bed, 
And  advice  with  scrupulous  head. 
Strict  age  and  sour  severity, 
With  their  grave  saws  in  slumber  lie. 
We,  that  are  of  purer  fire, 
Imitate  the  starry  quire  ; 
Who,  in  their  nightly  watchful  spheres, 
Lead  in  swift  rounds  the  months  and  years." 

—  Comus. 

10.  Equanimity— Serene  Dignity.— While  Milton's 
prose  is  frequently  disfigured  with  ill-natured  expressions,  his 
verse  generally  flows  on  undisturbed,  like  a  deep  stream. 

"The  strength  of  his  mind  overcame  every  calamity 
Neither  blindness  nor  gout  nor  age  nor  penury  nor  domestic 


124  MILTON 

afflictions  nor  political  disappointments  nor  abuse  nor  pro- 
scription nor  neglect,  had  power  to  disturb  his  sedate  and 
majestic  patience." — Macaulay. 

"  He  did  not  face  objects  on  a  level,  as  a  mortal,  but  from 
on  high,  like  those  archangels  of  Goethe,  who  embrace  at  a 
glance  the  whole  ocean  lashing  its  coasts  and  the  earth  rolling 
on,  wrapt  in  the  harmony  of  the  fraternal  stars."  —Taine. 

"  Himself  a  poem.  Grave,  serene,  wholly  given  up  Lo  the 
contemplation  of  heavenly  things,  slowly  maturing  the  work 
of  his  life,  isolated  in  his  generation  by  the  very  force  of  his 
genius.  His  soul,  as  Wordsworth  has  said,  was  '  like  a  star 
and  dwelt  apart.'  He  has  an  indefinable  serenity  and  vic- 
toriousness,  a  sustained  equality,  an  indomitable  power;  one 
might  almost  say  that  he  wraps  us  in  the  skirt  of  his  robe  and 
wafts  us  with  him  to  the  eternal  regions  where  he  himself 
dwells. ' ' — Edmond  Scherer. 

"As  a  man  moving  among  other  men,  he  possessed,  in 
that  moral  seriousness  and  stoic  scorn  of  temptation  which 
characterized  him,  a  spring  of  ever  present  pride,  dignifying 
his  whole  bearing  among  his  fellows,  and  at  times  arousing 
him  to  a  kingly  intolerance.  He  was  one  of  those  servants 
to  whom  God  had  entrusted  the  stewardship  of  the  ten 
talents. ' ' — David  Masson. 

"  The  strength  of  his  mind  overcame  every  calamity. 
There  is  no  such  unfailing  dignity  as  his." — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When  I  consider  how  my  light  is  spent 

Ere  half  my  days  in  this  dark  world  and  wide  ; 
And  that  one  talent  which  is  death  to  hide 
Lodged  with  me  useless,  though  my  soul  more  bent 
To  serve  therewith  my  Maker  and  present 
My  true  account,  lest  He,  returning,  chide ; 
'  Doth  God  exact  day-labour,  light  denied  ? ' 
I  fondly  ask  :  but  Patience,  to  prevent 


MILTON  125 

That  murmur,  soon  replies,  *  God  doth  not  need 
Either  man's  work  or  his  own  gifts  ;  who  best 
Bear  his  mild  yoke,  they  serve  him  best.  His  state 

Is  kingly;  thousands  at  his  bidding  speed, 
And  post  o'er  land  and  ocean  without  rest ; 
They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait.'  " 

— Sonnet  on  His  Blindness. 


"  Cyriack,  this  three  years'  day  these  eyes,  though  clear, 
To  outward  view,  of  blemish  or  of  spot, 
Bereft  of  light,  their  seeing  have  forgot, 
Nor  to  their  idle  orbs  doth  sight  appear 
Of  sun,  or  moon,  or  star  throughout  the  year, 
Or  man,  or  woman.     Yet  I  argue  not 
Against  Heaven's  hand  or  will,  nor  bate  a  jot 
Of  heart  or  hope  ;  but  still  bear  up  and  steer 
Right  onward.     What  supports  me,  dost  thou  ask  ? 
The  conscience,  friend,  to  have  lost  them  overplied 
In  liberty's  defence,  my  noble  task, 
Of  which  all  Europe  rings  from  side  to  side. 
This  thought  might  lead  me  through  the  world's  vain  mask 
Content,  though  blind,  had  I  no  better  guide." 

—  To  Cyriack  Skinner. 

"  But  not  to  me  returns 
Day,  or  the  sweet  approach  of  even  or  morn, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom  or  summer  rose, 
Or  flocks  or  herds  or  human  face  divine  ; 
But  cloud  instead,  and  ever  during  dark. 
Surrounds  me,  from  the  cheerful  ways  of  men 
Cut  off,  and  for  the  book  of  knowledge  fair 
Presented  with  a  universal  blank 
Of  nature's  works  to  me  expunged  and  raised, 
And  wisdom  at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out. 
So  much  the  rather  then,  Celestial  Light, 
Shine  inward,  and  the  mind  thro'  all  her  powers 
Irradiate  ;  there  plant  eyes  ;  all  mist  from  them 
Purge  and  disperse  that  I  may  see  and  tell 
Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight." — Paradise  Lost. 


126  MILTON 

ii.   Incongruity— Contradiction — Unnaturalness. 

—  A  certain  class  of  critics,  notably  among  the  French,  is 
fond  of  making  merry  over  Milton's  incongruity.  While  the 
consensus  of  critical  opinion  seems  not  to  uphold  Scherer's 
dictum  that  "  Paradise  Lost  "  is  "a  poem  which  is  at  once  the 
most  extraordinary  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  intolerable 
in  existence,"  we  cannot  fairly  ignore  the  force  of  these  ad- 
verse criticisms. 

"  The  confusion  of  spirit  and  matter  which  pervades  the 
whole  narration  of  the  war  of  Heaven  fills  it  with  incongruity  ; 
and  the  book  in  which  it  is  related  is,  I  believe,  the  favorite 
of  children,  and  gradually  neglected  as  knowledge  is  increased. 
In  (  Lycidas,'  the  shepherd  is  likewise  now  a  feeder 
of  sheep  and  afterwards  an  ecclesiastical  preacher,  a  superin- 
tendent of  a  Christian  flock." — Samuel  Johnson. 

11  Milton  is  a  clumsy  imitator  of  the  Greeks,  who  carica- 
tures creation  and  who,  while  Moses  represents  the  Eternal 
Being  as  creating  the  world  by  his  word,  makes  the  Messiah 
take  a  big  compass  out  of  a  cupboard  in  heaven  to  trace  out 
the  work.  .  .  .  His  marriage  of  Sin  and  Death,  and  the 
snakes  of  which  Sin  is  delivered,  make  any  man  of  tolerably  del- 
icate taste  sick,  and  his  long  description  of  a  hospital  is  only 
good  for  a  grave-digger.  .  .  .  The  archangel  Michael 
leads  Adam  to  a  hill  and  delivers  a  complete  course  of  lectures 
to  him  on  sacred  history.  .  .  .  '  Paradise  Lost '  is  not 
only  a  theological  poem — two  words  which  cry  out  at  finding 
themselves  united — but  it  is  at  the  same  time  a  commentary 
on  texts  of  Scripture.  ...  In  fixing  on  such  a  subject, 
Milton  was  obliged  to  treat  the  whole  story  as  a  literal  and 
authentic  history  ;  and,  worse  still,  to  take  a  side  on  the 
questions  which  it  starts.  Now  these  questions  are  the  very 
thorniest  in  theology :  and  so  it  comes  about  that  Milton,  who 
intended  to  instruct  us,  merely  launches  us  on  a  sea  of  diffi- 
culties. .  .  .  The  long  discourses  with  which  he  fills  the 
gaps  between  the  action  are  only  sermons,  and  do  but  make 


MILTON  127 

evident  the  absence  of  dramatic  matter.  .  .  .  We  see  a 
battle,  but  we  cannot  take  either  the  fight  or  the  fighters  seri- 
ously. A  God  who  can  be  resisted  is  not  a  God. 
The  poem  only  became  possible  at  the  cost  of  this  impossi- 
bility. .  .  .  He  makes  Lucifer  masquerade,  now  as  a 
toad,  now  as  a  pigmy ;  he  makes  the  devil  fire  cannon  in 
heaven.  When  the  day  comes  for  him  to  be  able  at  last  to 
realize  the  dreams  of  his  youth  and  endow  his  country  with 
an  epic,  he  will  construct  it  of  two  matters,  of  gold  and  of 
clay,  of  sublimity  and  of  scholasticism,  and  will  leave  us  a 
poem  which  is  at  once  the  most  extraordinary  and  at  the 
same  time  the  most  intolerable.  '  Paradise  Lost '  has  shared 
the  same  fate  of  its  hero,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  devil.  The 
idea  of  Satan  is  a  contradictory  idea ;  for  it  is  contradictory 
to  know  God  and  yet  attempt  rivalry  with  Him." — Edmond 
Scherer. 

"Ecstasy  alone  renders  visible  and  credible  the  objects  of 
ecstasy.  If  you  tell  us  of  the  exploits  of  the  Deity  as  you  tell 
us  of  Cromwell's,  in  a  grave  and  lofty  tone,  we  do  not  see 
God;  and,  as  He  constitutes  the  whole  of  your  poem,  we  do 
not  see  anything.  .  .  .  Milton's  poem,  while  it  sup- 
presses lyrical  illusion,  admits  critical  inquiry.  .  .  .-  No 
longer  hearing  odes,  we  would  see  objects  and  souls  :  we  ask 
that  Adam  and  Eve  should  act  in  conformity  with  their  prim- 
itive nature ;  that  God,  Satan,  and  Messiah  should  act  and 
feel  in  conformity  with  their  superhuman  nature ;  Shake- 
speare would  hardly  have  been  equal  to  the  task ;  Milton, 
the  logician  and  reasoner,  failed  in  it.  He  gives  us  correct 
solemn  discourse  and  gives  us  nothing  more  ;  his  charac- 
ters are  speeches,  and  in  their  sentiments  we  find  only  heaps 
of  puerilities  and  contradictions.  ...  I  listen  [to  Adam 
and  Eve]  and  I  hear  an  English  household,  two  readers 
of  the  period — Colonel  Hutchinson  and  his  wife.  Good 
Heavens  !  dress  them  at  once.  People  with  so  much  culture 
should  have  invented  before  all  a  pair  of  trousers  and  modesty. 


128  MILTON 

This  Adam  entered  Paradise  via  England. 
She  [Eve],  like  a  good  housewife,  talks  about  the  menu. 
.  .  .  She  makes  sweet  wine,  perry,  creams ;  scatters  flowers 
and  leaves  under  the  table.  What  an  excellent  housewife  ! 
What  a  great  many  votes  she  will  gain  among  the  country 
squires,  when  Adam  stands  for  Parliament !  Adam  belongs 
to  the  Opposition,  is  a  Whig,  a  Puritan.  .  .  .  The  an- 
gel, though  ethereal,  eats  like  a  Lincolnshire  farmer.  .  .  . 
At  table  Eve  listens  to  the  angel's  stories,  then  discreetly  rises 
at  dessert,  when  they  are  getting  into  politics.  .  .  .  She 
rebels  with  a  little  prick  of  proud  vanity,  like  a  young  lady 
who  mayn't  go  out  by  herself.  She  has  her  way,  goes  alone, 
and  eats  the  apple.  Here  interminable  speeches  come  down 
on  the  reader,  as  numerous  and  cold  as  winter  showers.  .  .  . 
The  serpent  seduces  Eve  by  a  collection  of  arguments  wor- 
thy of  the  punctilious  Chillingworth.  .  .  .  What  is 
smaller  than  a  god  sunk  to  the  level  of  a  king  and  a  man ! 

Milton's  Jehovah  is  a  grave  king,  who  maintains  a 
suitable  state,  something  like  Charles  I.  ...  We  per- 
ceive that  Milton's  Jehovah  is  connected  with  the  theologian 
James  I.,  versed  in  the  arguments  of  Arminians  and  Gomarists, 
very  clever  at  the  distingue,  and  before  all  incomparably  te- 
dious. .  .  .  Goethe's  God,  half  abstraction,  half  legend, 
source  of  calm  oracles,  a  vision  just  beheld  after  a  pyramid  of 
ecstatic  strophes,  greatly  excels  this  Miltonic  God,  a  business 
man,  a  schoolmaster,  an  ostentatious  man.  .  .  .  Milton's 
heaven  is  a  Whitehall  filled  with  bedizened  footmen.  The  an- 
gels are  the  choristers,  whose  business  is  to  sing  cantatas  about 
the  king.  .  .  .  Milton  describes  the  tables,  the  dishes, 
the  wine,  the  vessels.  It  is  a  popular  festival ;  I  miss  the  fire- 
works, the  bell-ringing,  as  in  London.  .  .  .  Heaven  is 
partitioned  off  like  a  good  map.  .  .  .  These  sorry  angels 
have  their  minds  as  well  disciplined  as  their  limbs ;  they  have 
passed  their  youth  in  a  class  in  logic  and  in  a  drill  school. 

What  a  heaven  !     It  is  enough  to  disgust  a  man  with 


MILTON 

Paradise  ;  anyone  would  rather  enter  Charles  I.'s  troop  of 
lackeys  or  Cromwell's  Ironsides.  We  have  orders  of  the  day, 
a  hierarchy,  exact  submission,  extra-duties,  disputes,  regu- 
lated ceremonials,  prostration,  etiquette,  furbished  arms,  ar- 
senals, depots  of  chariots  and  ammunition.  Was  it  worth 
while  leaving  earth  to  find  in  heaven  carriage-works,  build- 
ings, artillery,  a  manual  of  tactics,  the  art  of  salutation,  and 
the  Almanac  de  Gotha?  " — Taine. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  So  down  they  sat, 

And  to  their  viands  fell ;  nor  seemingly 
The  angel,  nor  in  mist,  the  common  gloss 
Of  theologians  ;  but  with  keen  dispatch 
Of  real  hunger  and  concoctive  heat 
To  transubstantiate  ;  what  redounds,  transpires 
Through  spirits  with  ease  ;  nor  wonder,  if  by  fire 
Of  sooty  coal  the  empiric  alchemist 
Can  turn,  or  holds  it  possible  to  turn, 
Metals  or  drossiest  ore  to  perfect  gold, 
As  from  the  mine.     Meanwhile  at  table,  Eve 
Ministered  naked,  and  their  flowing  cups 
With  pleasant  liquors  drowned." 

— Paradise  Lost. 

"  If  this  be  our  condition,  thus  to  dwell 
In  narrow  circuit  straitened  by  a  foe, 
Subtle  or  violent,  we  not  endued 
Single  with  like  defence,  wherever  met, 
How  are  we  happy,  still  in  fear  of  harm  ? 
But  harm  precedes  not  sin  :  only  our  foe, 
Tempting,  affronts  us  with  his  foul  esteem 
Of  our  integrity  :  his  foul  esteem 
Sticks  no  dishonour  on  our  front,  but  turns 
Foul  on  himself ;  then  wherefore  shunned  or  feared 
By  us  ?  who  rather  double  honour,  gain 
9 


130  MILTON 

From  his  surmise  proved  false,  find  peace  within, 
Favor  from  Heaven,  our  witness  from  the  event. 
And  what  is  faith,  love,  virtue,  unassayed 
Alone,  without  exterior  help  sustained  ?  " 

— Paradise  Lost. 

"  Immediate  in  a  flame, 
From  those  deep-throated  engines  belched, 

.     .     .     .     Chained  thunderbolts  and  hail 
Of  iron  globes  ;  which  on  the  victor  host 
Levelled,  with  such  impetuous  fury  smote, 
That  whom  they  hit  none  on  their  feet  might  stand, 
Though  standing  else  as  rocks,  but  down  they  fell 
By  thousands,  angel  on  archangel  rolled." 

— Paradise  Lost. 


DRYDEN,  1631-1700 

Biographical  Outline. — John  Dryden,  born  August  9, 
1631,  at  Aldwinckle  Allsaints,  Northamptonshire;  his  father 
was  a  justice  of  the  peace,  the  third  son  of  a  baronet,  and  his 
mother  the  daughter  of  a  clergyman  ;  Dryden  gets  "  his  first 
learning ' '  at  Tichmarsh,  where  a  monument  was  afterward 
erected  to  him  and  to  his  parents,  who  were  buried  there  ;  later 
he  obtains  a  scholarship  at  Westminster  School,  where  Busby 
is  his  head-master  and  Locke  and  South  are  his  school-mates ; 
he  enters  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  on  a  scholarship  in 
July,  1650  ;  he  writes  a  few  elegies  and  commendatory  poems 
before  entering  Cambridge;  in  July,  1652,  he  is  "  discom- 
muned,"  and  is  compelled  to  apologize  to  the  vice-master  for 
contumacy,  but  is  graduated  B.A.  in  January,  1654  ;  his 
father  dies  in  June,  1654,  leaving  to  Dryden  an  estate  worth 
^40  a  year,  after  deducting  his  mother's  life-interest;  he 
does  not  try  for  an  advanced  university  degree,  probably  be- 
cause of  a  lack  of  means ;  his  kinsmen  sided  with  the  people 
against  Charles  I.,  and  his  cousin  became  chamberlain  to 
Cromwell  and  was  one  of  Charles's  judges ;  Dryden  is  said 
to  have  begun  life  as  a  clerk  to  this  cousin ;  upon  Crom- 
well's death,  in  September,  1658,  Dryden  writes  his  "  Heroic 
Stanzas,"  which  are  published  in  a  volume  with  poems  by 
Waller  and  Sprat. 

After  the  Restoration,  Dryden  takes  lodgings  with  one 
Herringman,  a  bookseller  of  the  New  Exchange,  London,  for 
whom  he  is  reported  (doubtless  incorrectly)  to  have  been 
hack-writer  ;  Herringman  publishes  Dryden's  books  till  1679, 
when  the  poet  meets  Sir  Robert  Howard,  who  seems  to  have 
aided  him;  on  December  i,  1663,  Dryden  is  married  to 

131 


132  DRYDEN 

Lady  Elizabeth  Howard,  sister  of  his  friend ;  the  lady  had 
been  the  subject  of  some  scandals,  and  Dryden  is  said  to  have 
been  bullied  into  the  marriage  by  her  brothers  ;  her  father 
settles  upon  them  a  small  estate  in  Wiltshire,  but  a  difference 
of  prior  social  standing  and  apparent  mutual  infidelity  make 
the  marriage  an  unhappy  one,  although  both  Dryden  and  his 
wife  were  warmly  attached  to  their  children  ;  in  November, 
1662,  Dryden  is  elected  a  member  of  the  Royal  Society,  »vhere 
he  associates  with  Bacon,  Gilbert,  Boyle,  and  Harvey  j  about 
this  time  the  opening  of  the  King's  Theatre  and  the  Duke's 
Theatre  in  London  causes  Dryden  to  begin  play-writing;  his 
first  acted  play,  "The  Wild  Gallant,"  was  performed  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1663,  and  failed  ;  during  the  same  year  his  second  play, 
"The  Wild  Ladies,"  succeeded  fairly,  at  the  same  theatre ; 
Pepys  records  seeing  Dryden  in  February,  1664,  at  Covent 
Garden  coffee-house,  "  with  all  the  wits  of  the  town ;  "  early 
in  1665  a  third  play,  "The  Indian  Emperor,"  is  brought 
out  with  marked  success. 

While  the  theatres  are  closed,  from  May,  1665,  to  De- 
cember, 1666,  because  of  the  Plague  and  the  great  London 
fire,  Dryden  retires  to  a  seat  of  his  father-in-law  at  Charlton 
in  Wiltshire,  where  his  son  is  born  ;  during  this  retreat  he 
composes  his  "  Annus  Mirabilis"  and  his  "Essay  on  Dra- 
matic Poesy,"  defending  the  use  of  rhyme  in  the  drama; 
the  "  Essay  "  is  published  in  March,  1667  ;  Dryden 's  fourth 
drama,  "  Secret  Love,"  is  produced  at  the  King's  Theatre,  and 
Nell  Gwyn  is  one  of  the  persona  ;  during  1667  he  also  pro- 
duces "  Sir  Martin  Mar-all,"  one  of  his  most  successful  plays; 
about  this  time  he  makes  a  contract  with  the  King's  Theatre 
company  to  provide  them  with  three  plays  a  year,  in  consid- 
eration of  receiving  one-tenth  of  the  profits  of  the  theatre ; 
he  did  not  provide  all  the  plays  stipulated,  but  received  as 
high  as  ,£400  a  year,  as  his  share  of  the  profits,  until  the  burn- 
ing of  the  theatre  in  1672  ;  in  1669  he  published  an  opera 
called  "The  State  of  Innocence,"  founded,  with  Milton's 


DRYDEN 

permission,  on  "Paradise  Lost";  of  his  heroic  tragedies, 
"  Tyrannic  Love  "  appeared  in  1669  and  "  Almanzar  "  and 
"  Almahide  "in  1670  ;  his  "  All  for  Love  "  is  produced  in 
1672;  in  1668  (at  the  King's  request)- the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  confers  upon  Dryden  the  degree  of  M.A.,  and  in 
1670  he  is  made  poet-laureate  and  historiographer,  offices 
which,  combined,  gave  him  a  salary  of  ^200  a  year,  with  a 
butt  of  Canary  wine  ;  his  total  annual  income  between  1670 
and  1 68 1,  from  all  sources,  averaged  from  ^420  to  ^£577. 

Between  1668  and  1681  he  produced  about  fourteen  plays  ; 
the  comedies  were  most  licentious,  gave  offence  even  then,  and 
have  been  deservedly  lost ;  in  1673  he  produces  "  Amboyna," 
a  tragedy  founded  on  the  existing  relation  of  the  English 
with  the  Dutch,  and  in  1681  another  called  "The  Spanish 
Friar,"  founded  on  the  Popish  plot;  his  last  and  finest 
rhymed  tragedy,  "  Aurengzebe,"  was  produced  in  1675,  and  is 
said  to  have  been  read  in  manuscript  and  revised  by  Charles 
II.;  about  this  time  Dryden  proposes  to  write  an  epic  poem, 
and  asks  for  a  pension  on  that  ground,  admitting  that  he 
"  never  felt  himself  very  fit  for  tragedy  ;  "  he  receives  a  pen- 
sion of  ;£ioo  a  year,  but  writes,  instead  of  an  epic,  his  finest 
play,  "  All  for  Love  ;"  in  1679  he  brings  out  an  alteration  of 
"  Troilus  and  Cressida,"  in  which  he  pays  further  homage  to 
Shakespeare. 

In  1671  his  "  heroic  tragedies  "  are  ridiculed  in  the  famous 
"Rehearsal,"  written  by  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  Butler, 
Sprat,  and  others;  he  has  various  literary  controversies,  and  is 
beaten  by  ruffians,  hired  by  his  enemies,  in  December,  1679  ; 
the  main  cause  was  the  attribution  to  Dryden  of  Mulgrave's 
"Essay  on  Satire,"  written  in  1675  and  reflecting  severely 
upon  the  private  life  of  prominent  personages ;  Dryden  was 
charged  by  various  libellers  with  sympathy  with  Shaftesbury  in 
his  opposition  to  the  Court,  and  so,  in  November,  1681,  he 
demonstrated  his  loyalty  to  Charles  II.  by  publishing  the  first 
of  his  great  satires,  "  Absalom  and  Achitophel ;  "  Tate  de- 


134  DRYDEN 

clares  that  the  theme  of  the  satire  was  suggested  to  Dryden  by 
Charles  ;  it  obtained  at  once  an  enormous  sale,  and  is  still  re- 
garded as  "  the  finest  satire  in  our  language  for  masculine  in- 
sight and  for  vigor  of  expression  ;  "  his  second  great  satire, 
"The  Medal/'  appears  in  March,  1682  ;  partisans  of  Shaftes- 
bury  reply  in  half  a  dozen  satires  upon  Dryden,  and  he  rejoins 
with  "  Mac  Flecknoe,"  published  October  4,  1682,  especially 
directed  against  Shadwell,  who  had  repudiated  his  former 
friendship  for  Dryden,  and  had  published  "  The  Medal  of 
John  Boyes  [Dryden]  ;  "  in  November,  1682,  appeared  a  sec- 
ond part  of  "  Absalom  and  Achitophel,"  in  which  two  hun- 
dred lines  were  written  by  Dryden  and  the  rest  by  Nahum 
Tate  ;  during  the  same  month  Dryden  publishes  his  '*  Religio 
Laid  "  (a  defence  of  the  Anglican  position)  and  "  The  Duke 
of  Guise,"  a  satire,  of  which  the  greater  part  was  written  by 
Nathaniel  Lee;  during  1682-84  he  writes  many  prologues, 
epilogues,  and  prefaces,  and  secures  as  much  as  three  guineas 
for  each. 

In  1684  he  translates  Maimbourg's  "  History  of  the 
League,"  and  in  that  and  the  following  year  publishes  two 
volumes  of  "  Miscellaneous  Poems,"  including  contributions 
from  other  writers;  evidence  taken  from  his  private  letters  at 
this  time  shows  that  he  was  in  financial  straits,  and  was  writing 
under  the  spur  of  poverty;  in  December,  1683,  after  an  ap- 
peal for  aid  to  the  Earl  of  Rochester,  he  is  appointed  collector 
of  customs  in  the  port  of  London,  an  office  which,  through  its 
fees,  somewhat  relieved  him  financially;  near  the  close  of 
Charles's  life  Dryden  writes  two  operas,  "  Albion  and  Al- 
banius  "  and  "  King  Arthur,"  in  honor  of  the  King's  politi- 
cal successes  ;  the  latter  opera  was  produced  in  June,  1685, 
after  the  accession  of  James  ;  Dryden's  orifices  and  his  pen- 
sion of  ;£ioo  are  continued  under  James  II.;  in  January, 
1686,  he  is  reported  to  have  been  seen,  with  his  two  sons  and 
Mrs.  Nelly  (mistress  to  the  late  King),  "going  to  Mass;  " 
his  conversion  to  Romanism  at  this  time  seems  to  have  been 


DRYDEN  135 

mainly  from  venal  motives ;  he  seems,  however,  gradually  to 
have  become  a  sincere  adherent  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and 
soon  begins  to  write  in  her  favor ;  he  translates  but  does  not 
publish  Vorillar's  "  History  of  Religious  Revolutions,"  and  is 
employed  by  James  to  answer  Stillingfleet,  who  had  assailed 
papers  upon  Catholicism  written  by  James  himself;  in  April, 
1687,  Dryden  publishes  "  The  Hind  and  the  Panther,"  his 
most  famous  work ;  this  poem  was  parodied  by  Prior  and 
others  ;  Dryden  also  translates  a  life  of  St.  Francis  Xavier  and 
writes  "Britannia  Rediviva"  a  congratulatory  poem  on  the 
birth  of  James's  son,  in  June,  1688. 

By  the  Revolution  of  1688  Dryden  loses  all  his  offices,  and 
is  succeeded  as  laureate  by  Shadwell ;  he  receives  financial  aid 
from  the  Earl  of  Dorset,  and  returns  to  his  former  occupation 
of  play- writing  ;  "  Don  Sebastian,"  one  of  his  best  tragedies, 
and  his  comedy  "  Amphitrion  "  are  performed  in  1690;  in 
1691  he  brings  out  his  opera  "King  Arthur,"  altered  in  its 
politics  to  fit  the  times;  in  1692  he  produces  "  Cleomenes," 
which  was  finished  by  Southerne,  because  of  Dryden's  illness ; 
his  last  drama,  "  Love  Triumphant,"  was  produced  in  1694, 
but  failed  ;  in  1698  Dryden  is  attacked,  with  other  contem- 
poraries, in  the  famous  work  of  Jeremy  Collier  against  the 
theatre,  and  he  acknowledges  that  Collier's  strictures  are  in 
part  just ;  meantime  he  had  written,  in  honor  of  the  Countess 
of  Abingdon,  a  stranger  to  Dryden,  his  elegiac  poem  "  Eleo- 
nora,"  probably  from  purely  pecuniary  motives;  in  1693  he 
publishes  a  translation  of  Juvenal  and  Persius  and  a  new 
volume  of  "  Miscellanies;  "  about  1693  he  begins  his  trans- 
lation of  Virgil,  which  is  published  by  subscription  in  July, 
1697;  Pope  declares  that  Dryden  received  ^1,200  for  the 
"Virgil  ;  "  he  also  received  presents  from  various  noble  pa- 
trons, and  offended  his  publisher,  Tonson,  by  steadfastly  re- 
fusing to  dedicate  the  "  Virgil  "  to  William  III.  ;  in  1697  he 
begins  his  "  Fables,"  consisting  of  translations  from  Homer's 
"Iliad,"  Ovid's  "Metamorphoses,"  Chaucer,  and  Boccaccio, 


136  DRYDEN 

amounting  to  12,000  verses  when  published  in  1700;  about 
1697  he  again  appeals  to  the  Government  for  aid,  but  says 
that  he  "  cannot  buy  favor  by  forsaking  his  religion  ;  "  in  1697 
he  also  writes  for  a  London  musical  society  his  famous  ode, 
"  Alexander's  Feast ;  "  during  his  later  years  he  spends  most 
of  his  time  at  Will's  Coffee-house,  surrounded  by  young  wits 
and  worshipped  as  literary  dictator  ;  early  in  1 700  he  writes  an 
additional  scene  for  Fletcher's  "  Pilgrim,"  in  preparation  for 
its  performance  as  a  benefit  for  Fletcher's  son  ;  Dryden  also 
carries  on  a  correspondence  with  "enthusiastic  ladies,"  and 
is  courted  by  Congreve,  Addison,  and  other  prominent  writ- 
ers;  he  dies  in  his  house  in  Gerrard  Street,  London,  May  i, 
1700. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF   CRITICISM   ON   DRYDEN. 

Gosse,    E. ,    "History   of   Eighteenth    Century  Literature."     London, 

1889,  Macmillan,  9-40. 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Among  My  Books."     Boston,  1872,  Osgood,  1-70. 
Johnson,  S.,  "Lives  of  the  Most  Eminent  English  Poets."     London, 

1854,  John  Murray,  269-391. 

Masson,  D.,  "English  Poets."     Cambridge,    1856,  Macmillan,  88-139. 
Taine,    H.   A.,    "History  of   English  Literature."     New  York,    1874, 

Holt,  v.  index. 
Hazlitt,  W.,  "Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,  1876,  Bell, 

91-112. 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "Works."     LondoTT7>^87i,   Longman,  Green  &  Co., 

v.  index. 
Saintsbury,  G.,  "  English  Men  of  Letters."     London,  1881,  Macmillan, 

1-92. 
Scott,    Sir   Walter,    "  Dryden, "  with  a  biography.     Edinburgh,    1882, 

T.  &  A.  Constable,  1-446. 
Rossetti,  Wm.,  "  Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,  1878,  E.  Moxon, 

92-107. 
Mitford,  J.,  "  Life  of  Dryden."     Boston,    1864,    Little,   Brown  &  Co., 

1-146. 
Browning,  E.  B.,  "The  English  Poets."     London,  1863,  Chapman  & 

Hall,  183-211. 


DRYDEN  137 

Howitt,  Wm.,  "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,  1863, 

Routledge,  78-81. 

Reed,  H.,  "British  Poets."     Philadelphia,  1870,  Claxton,  267-297. 
Craik,  G.  L.,  "English  Literature."     New  York,  1869,  Scribner,  115- 

119. 
Bell,  E.,  "Life  of  Dryden."     London,   1839,  Longman,  Green  &  Co., 

1-69. 
Skelton,  J.,  "Essays   in   History  and   Biography."     Edinburgh,    1883, 

Black,  143-165. 
Collier,    W.    F.,    "History   of   English    Literature."     London,    1892, 

Nelson,  236-243. 

Hallam,  H.,  "  Works."     New  York,  1859,  Harper,  v.  index. 
Masson,  D.,    "Three  Devils,"   etc.     London,    1874,    Macmillan,  153- 

235- 

Edinburgh  Review,  47  :  1-36  (Macaulay) ;    13  :  116-135  (H.  Hallam). 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  57:  133-158  and  503-528  (J.  Wilson). 
British  Quarterly  Review,  20  :  1-44  (D.  Masson). 
North  American  Review,  107 :  186-248  (J.  R.  Lowell). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Cold    Intellectuality  —  Lack    of    Emotion.— 

These  manners  of  Dryden  show  that  literature  had  become  a 
matter  of  study  rather  than  inspiration,  an  employment  for 
the  taste  rather  than  for  the  enthusiasm,  a  source  of  distraction 
rather  than  of  emotion.  His  was  a  singularly  solid  and  judi- 
cious mind;  an  excellent  reasoner,  accustomed  to  discriminate 
his  ideas,  armed  with  good,  long-meditated  proofs,  strong  in 
discussion,  asserting  principles,  establishing  his  sub-divisions, 
citing  authorities,  drawing  inferences.  His  style  is  well 
moulded,  exact,  and  simple,  free  from  the  affectations  and 
ornaments  with  which  Pope  afterwards  burdened  nis  own. 
He  shows  a  mind  constantly  upright,  bending  rather  from 
conventionality  tnan  Irorn  nature,  with  dash  and  afflatus, 
occupied  with  grave  thoughts,  and  subjecting  his  conduct  to 
his  convictions.  Pamphlets  and  dissertations  in  verse,  satires, 
letters,  translations  and  imitations,  this  is  the  field  on  which 
logical  faculties  and  the  art  of  writing  find  their  best  occupa- 


138  DRYDEN 

tion.  This  is  the  true  domain  of  Dryden  and  of  classical 
reason.  He  develops,  defines,  concludes  ;  he  declares  his 
thought,  then  takes  it  up  again,  that  his  reader  may  receive  it 
prepared,  and,  having  received  it,  may  retain  it.  Dryden  is 
the  most  classical  of  all  the  English  poets.  The  poetic  genius 
of  this  man  was  preeminently  robust  and  unromantic."- 
Taine. 

"He  is  best  upon  a  level  table-land  ;  it  is  true,  a  very 
high  level,  but  still  somewhere  between  the  loftier  peaks  of 
inspiration  and  the  plain  of  every-day  life.  ...  He  was 
a  strong  thinker,  who  sometimes  carried  common-sense  to  a 
height  where  it  catches  the  light  of  a  diviner  air,  and  warmed 
reason  till  it  had  well-nigh  the  illuminating  property  of  intui- 
tion. He  blows  the  mind  clear.  In  ripeness  of  mind  and 
bluff  heartiness  of  expression  he  takes  rank  with  the  best."— 
Lowell. 

"  There  is  no  fine  power  of  dramatic  story,  no  exquisite 
invention  of  character  or  circumstance,  no  truth  to  nature  in 
ideal  landscape  :  at  the  utmost,  there  is  conventional  dra- 
matic situation,  with  an  occasional  flash  of  splendid  imagery 
such  as  may  be  struck  out  in  the  heat  of  heroic  declamation." 
— David  Masson. 

"  Nay,  but  he  was  a  poet,  an  excellent  poet — in  marble  ; 
and  Phidias,  with  the  sculpturesque  ideal  separated  from  his 
working  tool,  might  have  carved  him.  He  was  a  poet  with- 
out passion.  ...  He  thrust  out  nature  with  a  fork. 
To  be  sure  it  was  not  necessary  that  John  Dryden 
should  keep  a  Bolingbroke  to  think  for  him  :  but  to  be  sure 
again,  it  is  something  to  be  born  with  a  heart,  particularly 
for* a  poet." — Mrs.  Browning. 

"  He  is,  with  all  his  variety  of  excellence,  not  often  pa- 
thetic ;  and  had  so  little  sensibility  of  effusions  purely  natural 
that  he  did  not  esteem  them  in  others ;  simplicity  gave  him 
no  pleasure." — Samuel  Johnson. 

"Almost  the  only  feature  of  the  future  Dryden  which  this 


DRYDEN  139 

production  ['  Lines  on  the  Death  of  Lord  Hastings  ']  dis- 
closes is  his  deficiency  in  sensibility  or  heart ;  exciting  as  the 
occasion  was,  it  does  not  contain  an  affecting  line. 
Without  either  creative  imagination  or  any  power  of  pathos, 
he  is  in  argument,  in  satire,  and  in  declamatory  magnificence, 
the  greatest  of  our  poets." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  He  was  a  more  vigorous  thinker,  a  more  correct  and  log- 
ical declaimer,  and  had  more  of  what  may  be  called  strength 
of  mind  than  Pope." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  His  imagination  was  torpid  until  it  was  awakened  by  his 
judgment.  ...  He  sat  down  to  work  himself,  by  reflection 
and  argument,  into  a  deliberate  wildness,  a  rational  frenzy. 
No  man  exercised  so  much  influence  on  the  age.  He  was 
perhaps  the  greatest  of  those  whom  we  have  designated  as  the 
critical  poets ;  and  his  literary  career  exhibited,  on  a  reduced 
scale,  the  whole  history  of  the  school  to  which  he  belonged. 
His  command  of  language  was  immense.  With  him 
died  the  secret  of  the  old  poetical  diction  of  England,  the 
art  of  producing  rich  effects  by  familiar  words.  .  .  .  His 
critical  works  are,  beyond  all  comparison,  superior  to  any 
which  had,  till  then,  appeared  in  England.  ...  He  began 
with  quaint  parallels  and  empty  mouthing.  He  gradually  ac- 
quired the  energy  of  the  satirist,  the  gravity  of  the  moralist, 
the  rapture  of  the  lyric  poet.  He  was  utterly  destitute  of 
the  power  of  exhibiting  real  human  beings." — Macaulay. 

"  In  literary  criticism  Dryden  was  himself  the  greatest 
authority  of  the  period,  and  for  many  years  it  was  in  this 
form  that  he  at  once  exercised  himself  and  educated  his  age 
in  the  matter  of  prose  writing." — George  Saintsbury. 

"  His  excellencies  were  those  of  the  intellect  and  not  of 
the  spirit.  Dryden 's  poetry  ~.  '.  ~.  is  of  the  very  higEest 
kind  in  its  class.  Wherever  the  pure  intellect  comes  into 
play,  there  he  is  invariably  excellent." — T.  R.  Lounsbury. 


I4O  DRYDEN 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  Deist  thinks  he  stands  on  firmer  ground ; 
Cries  '  Eureka '  the  mighty  secret's  found  : 
God  is  that  spring  of  good,  supreme  and  blest ; 
We,  made  to  serve,  and  in  that  service  blest ; 
If  so,  some  rules  of  worship  must  be  given, 
Distributed  to  all  alike  by  Heaven  ; 
Else  God  were  partial  and  to  some  denied 
The  means  His  justice  should  for  all  provide." 

— Religio  Laid. 

11  Yet  'tis  our  duty  and  our  interest  too, 
Such  monuments  as  we  can  build  to  raise  ; 
Lest  all  the  world  prevent  what  we  should  do, 
And  claim  a  title  in  him  by  their  praise. 

How  shall  I  then  begin  or  how  conclude, 
To  draw  a  fame  so  truly  circular  ? 
For  in  a  round  what  order  can  be  show'd, 
Where  all  the  parts  so  equal  perfect  are  ?  " 

— Stanzas  on  the  Death  of  Oliver  Cromwell. 

"  Farewell,  too  little  and  too  lately  known, 
Whom  I  began  to  think  and  call  my  own  : 
For  sure  our  souls  were  near  allied,  and  thine 
Cast  in  the  same  poetic  mould  with  mine, 
One  common  note  on  either  lyre  did  strike 
And  knaves  and  fools  we  both  abhorred  alike." 
— Lines  to  the  Memory  of  His  Friend,  Mr.  Oldham. 

Cool,  Biting  Satire. — "The  prodigality  of  irony, 
"the  sting  in  the  tail  of  every  couplet,  the  ingenuity  with 
which  the  odious  charges  are  made  against  the  victim,  and 
above  all  the  polish  of  the  language  and  the  verse  and  the 
tone  of  half-condescending  banter,  were  things  of  which  that 
time  had  had  no  experience.  .  .  .  There  had  been  a  con- 
tinuous tradition  among  satirists  that  they  must  affect  im- 
mense moral  indignation  at  the  evils  they  attacked.  . 


DRYDEN  141 

Now  this  moral  indignation,  apt  to  become  rather  tiresome 
when  the  subject  is  purely  ethical,  becomes  quite  intolerable 
when  the  subject  is  political.  It  never  does  for  the  political 
satirist  to  lose  his  temper  and  to  rave  and  rant  and  denounce 
with  the  air  of  an  inspired  prophet.  Dryden,  and  perhaps 
Dryden  alone,  has  observed  this  rule.  .  .  .  His  manner 
toward  this  subject  is  that  of  a  cool,  but  not  ill-humored  scorn. 
His  verse  strides  along  with  a  careless  Olympian 
motion,  as  if  the  writer  were  looking  at  his  victims  with  a  kind 
of  good-humored  scorn  rather  than  with  any  elaborate  triumph. 
.  .  .  Not  only  is  there  nothing  better  than  Dryden's 
satirical  and  didactic  poems  of  their  own  kind  in  English,  but 
it  may  almost  be  said  that  there  is  nothing  better  in  any 
other  literary  language.  .  .  .  There  never  was,  perhaps,  a 
satirist  who  less  abused  his  power,  for  personal  ends.  The 
satire  was  as  bitter  as  Butler's,  but  less  grotesque  and  less 
labored. ' ' — George  Saintsbury. 

"  His  greatest  power  .  .  .  was  in  satire — satire  into 
which  he  formed  his  whole  temperament,  even  more  than 
the  brilliancy  of  his  mind,  and  which  represents  chiefly  vehe- 
ment invective,  as  distinct  from  the  sting  and  scintillation 
of  the  epigram  and  lampoon." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  That  coolness  of  irony,  that  polished  banter,  which  gave 
to  Dryden  his  extraordinary  influence  as  a  satirist.  It  is  as  a 
satirist  and  pleader  in  verse  that  Dryden  is  best  known,  and 
as  both  he  is  in  some  respects  unrivalled.  His  satire  is  not  so 
sly  as  Chaucer's,  but  it  is  distinguished  by  the  same  good- 
nature. There  is  no  malice  in  it." — Lowell. 

"The  lofty  and  impassioned  satire  of  Dryden,  uniting  the 
vehemence  of  anger  with  the  self-control  of  conscious  deter- 
mination, presents  the  finest  example  of  that  sort  of  voluntary 
emotion." — Hartley  Coleridge. 

.  "  His  vein  of  satire  was  keen,  terse,  and  powerful  beyond  any 
that  has  since  been  displayed.  .  .  .  The  satirical  powers 
of  Dryden  were  of  the  highest  order.  .  .  .  The  models  of 


142  DRYDEN 

satire  afforded  by  Dryden,  as  they  have  never  been  equalled 
by  any  succeeding  poet,  were  in  a  tone  of  excellence  superior 
far  to  all  that  had  preceded  them.  ...  He  draws  his 
arrow  to  the  head  and  dismisses  it  straight  upon  the  object  of 
aim."—  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"As  a  satirist  he  has  rivalled  Juvenal.  His  'Absalom  and 
Achitophel'  is  the  greatest  satire  of  modern  times.  There 
is  a  magnanimity  of  abuse  in  some  of  these  epithets  [in 
*  Absalom  and  Achitophel'],  a  fearless  choice  of  topics,  of 
invective,  which  may  be  considered  as  the  heroical  in  satire." 
—  William  Hazlitt, 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Let  him  be  gallows-free  by  my  consent, 
And  nothing  suffer,  since  he  nothing  meant ; 
Hanging  supposes  human  soul  and  reason  ; 
This  animal's  below  committing  treason. 
Shall  he  be  hanged  who  never  could  rebel  ? 
That's  a  preferment  to  Achitophel. 

Railing  in  other  men  may  be  a  crime, 
But  ought  to  pass  for  mere  instinct  in  him  : 
Instinct  he  follows,  and  no  further  knows, 
For  to  write  verse  with  him  is  to  transpose." 

— Absalom  and  Achitophel. 

"  All  human  things  are  subject  to  decay, 

And  when  fate  summons,  monarchs  must  obey, 
This  Flecknoe  found,  who,  like  Augustus,  young 
Was  calPd  to  empire,  and  had  govern'd  long ; 
In  prose  and  verse,  was  own'd,  without  dispute, 
Through  all  the  realms  of  Nonsense,  absolute  ; 
Worn  out  with  business,  did  at  length  debate 
To  settle  the  succession  of  the  state  ; 
And,  pondering,  which  of  all  his  sons  was  fit 
To  reign,  and  wage  immortal  war  with  wit, 
Cried,  '  'Tis  resolved  :  for  nature  pleads  that  he 
Should  only  rule  who  most  resembles  me. 


DRYDEN  143 

Shadwell  alone  my  perfect  image  bears, 
Mature  in  dulness  from  his  early  years  : 
Shadwell  alone,  of  all  my  sons,  is  he, 
Who  stands  confirm'd  in  full  stupidity. 
The  rest  to  some  faint  meaning  make  pretence, 
But  Shadwell  never  deviates  into  sense. 
Some  beams  of  wit  on  other  souls  may  fall, 
Strike  through,  and  make  a  lucid  interval ; 
But  Shadwell's  genuine  night  admits  no  ray.'  " 

— Mac  Flecknoe. 

"  Power  was  his  aim  ;  but,  thrown  from  that  pretence, 
The  wretch  turn'd  loyal  in  his  own  defence ; 
And  malice  reconciled  him  to  his  prince. 
Him  in  the  anguish  of  his  soul  he  served, 
Rewarded  faster  still  than  he  deserved. 
Behold  him  now  exalted  into  trust, 
His  counsel's  oft  convenient,  seldom  just : 
Even  in  the  most  sincere  advice  he  gave, 
He  had  a  grudging  still  to  be  a  knave. 
The  frauds  he  learn'd  in  his  fanatic  years 
Make  him  uneasy  in  his  lawful  gears  : 
At  best  as  little  honest  as  he  could, 
And,  like  white  witches,  mischievously  good." 

—  The  Medal. 

3.  Metrical  Skill. — "Whatever  subjects  employed  his 
pen,  he  was  still  improving  our  measures  and  embellishing  our 
language.  Of  Dryden's  poems  it  was  said  by  Pope  that  he 
could  select  from  them  better  specimens  of  every  mode  of 
poetry  than  any  other  English  writer  could  supply.  Perhaps 
no  nation  ever  produced  a  writer  thaFenriched  his  language 
with  such  a  variety  of  models.  To  him  we  owe  the  im- 
provement, perhaps  the  completion  of  our  metre. " — Samuel 
Johnson. 

"  His  versification  flowed  so  easily  as  to  lessen  the  bad  ef- 
fects of  rhyme  in  dialogue.  ...  He  had  powers  of  versi- 
fication superior  to  those  possessed  by  any  other  English 


144  DRYDEN 

author.  .  .  .  He  first  showed  that  the  English  language 
was  capable  of  uniting  smoothness  and  strength.  He  knew 
how  to  choose  the  flowing  and  sonorous  words  ;  to  vary  the 
pauses  and  adjust  the  accents ;  to  diversify  the  cadence  and 
yet  preserve  the  smoothness  of  the  metre.  In  lyrical  poetry, 
Dry  den  must  be  allowed  to  have  no  equal.  '  Alexander's 
Feast  '  is  sufficient  to  show  his  supremacy  in  that  brilliant 
department." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  What  is  of  greatest  importance  to  poetical  students  is  to 
observe  vvhat  progress  Dryden  made  in  the  new  prosody  and 
how,  by  means  of  it,  he  drew  out  those  qualities  which  had 
been  too  much  neglected  in  the  verse  of  the  previous  age — 
ease,  intelligibility,  and  flexibility.  .  .  .  His  fluency, 
his  sustained  power,  the  cogency  and  the  lucidity  of  his  logic, 
polished  the  surface  of  didactic  and  narrative  poetry,  which, 
until  he  came,  had  been  rocky  and  irregular.  Dryden's  com- 
mand over  versification  is  shown  in  the  prologues  and  epi- 
logues which  he  produced  not  merely  for  his  own  plays  but  for 
those  of  others.  .  .  .  Dryden  was  greatly  Pope's  su- 
perior as  a  craftsman  in  verse.  Pope  excelled  only  in  the 
couplet,  whereas  Dryden  was  master  of  blank-verse  also  and 
of  a  greater  variety  of  lyrical  measure  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed. He  attained  full  mastery  over  the  balance  of  the 
iambic  verse,  so  that  the  poeTcoulil  rule  the  linejind  not  the 
line  carry  him  whither  it  would.  He  purified  the  national 
style  to  a  very  marked  extent,  freed  it  of  uncouth  and  super- 
fluous ornament,  and  drew  the  parts  of  the  language  into 
harmonious  relations  with  one  another." — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  It  was  in  declamatory  and  didactic  rhyme,  with  all  that 
could  consist  with  it,  that  Dryden  excelled.  It  was  in  the 
metrical  utterance  of  weighty  sentences,  in  the  metrical  con- 
duct of  an  argument,  in  vehement  satirical  invective,  and  in 
such  passages  of  lyric  passion  as  depend  for  their  effect  on 
rolling  grandeur  of  sound,  that  he  was  prominently  great." — 
David  Masson. 


DRYDEN  145 

"  Though  contracted  by  habits  of  classical  argument, 
though  stiffened  by  controversy  and  polemics,  though  unable 
to  create  souls  or  depict  artless  and  delicate  sentiments,  he 
is  a  genuine  poet.  He  lived  among  great  men  and  court- 
iers, in  a  society  of  artificial  manners  and  measured  language, 
but  under  his  regular  versification  the  artist's  soul  is  brought  to 
light." — Tame. 

"  The  varying  verse,  the  full  resounding  line, 
The  long  majestic  march  and  energy  divine." — Pope. 

"  In  Dryden,  the  rhyme  waits  upon  the  thought.  He 
knew  how  to  give  new  modulation,  sweetness,  and  force  to 
pentameter. ' ' — Lowell. 

11  In  the  management  of  the  heroic  couplet  Dryden  has 
never  been  equalled.  His  versification  sinks  and  swells  in 
happy  unison  with  the  subject  ['Absalom  and  Achitophel']  ; 
and  his  wealth  of  language  seems  to  be  unlimited.  As  a  didac- 
tic poet  he  perhaps  might,  with  care  and  meditation,  have 
rivalled  Lucretius.  Of  lyric  poets  he  is  the  most  brilliant 
and  spirit-stirring.  He  is  certainly  the  best  writer  of  heroic 
rhyme  in  our  language.  The  toughest  and  most  knotted  parts 
of  the  language  became  ductile  at  his  touch.  His  versifica- 
tion, .  .  .  while  it  gave  the  first  model  of  that  neatness. 
and_precision  which  the  following  generation  esteemed  so 
highly,  exhibited,  at  the  same  time,  the  last  example  of  noble- 
ness, freedom,  variety  of  pause,  and  cadence." — Macautiy. 

"  We  shall  hardly  find  one  of  the  practitioners  of  the  coup- 
let who  is  capable  of  such  masterly  treatment  of  the  form,  of 
giving  to  the  phrase  at  once  a  turn  so  clear  and  so  individual, 
of  weighting  the  verse  with  such  dignity  and  at  the  same  time 
winging  it  with  such  a  light-flying  speed.  .  .  .  The 
versification  of  English  satire  before  Dryden  had  been,  al- 
most without  exception,  harsh  and  rugged.  .  .  .  But 
Dryden  was  in  no  such  case.  His  native  gifts  and  his 
enormous  practice  in  play-writing  had  made  the  couplet  as 
natural  a  vehicle  to  him  for  any  form  of  discourse  as  blank 
10 


146  DRYDEN 

verse  or  plain  prose.  The  form  of  it,  too,  which  he  had  most 
affected  was  especially  suited  for  satire.  In  versification  the 
great  achievement  of  Dryden  was  the  alteration  of  what  may 
be  called  the  balance  of  the  line,  causing  it  to -run  more 
quickly  and  to  strike  its  rhymes  with  a  sharper  and  less  pro- 
longed sound." — George  Saintsbury. 

"  The  abounding  sweep  and  resilient  strength  of  his  versi- 
fication form  another  of  his  prime  excellencies,  and  he  may 
almost  be  said  to  have  remoulded  the  English  heroic  measure, 
puffing  it  out  to  excess,  it  should  be  admitted,  with  triple 
rhymes  and  rolling  Alexandrines.  (  Glorious  John,'  the  mas- 
ter of  the  full-sounding  line." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  He  perfected  by  degrees  his  mastery  of  heroic  verse,  of 
which  later  he  was  to  display  the  capabilities  in  a  way  that 
had  never  previously  been  seen  and  has  never  since  been  sur- 
passed. He  imparted  to  the  line  [heroic  verse]  a  variety, 
vigjw^and  sustained  majesty  of  movement  such  as  the  verse  in 
its' modern  form  had  never  previously  received."—;/.  J?. 
Lounsbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  soft  complaining  flute 
In  dying  notes  discovers 
The  woes  of  hopeless  lovers, 
Whose  dirge  is  whispered  by  the  warbling  lute. 

Sharp  violins  proclaim 
Their  jealous  pangs  and  desperation, 
Fury,  frantic  indignation, 
Depth  of  pains  and  heights  of  passion, 
For  the  fair,  disdainful  dame. 
But,  oh  !  what  art  can  teach, 
What  human  voice  can  reach, 
The  sacred  organ's  praise  ? 
Notes  inspiring  holy  love, 
Notes  that  wing  their  heavenly  ways 
To  mend  the  choirs  above." 

— A  Song  for  St.  Cecilia's  Day. 


DRYDEN  147 

The  praise  of  Bacchus  then  the  sweet  musician  sung, 
Of  Bacchus— ever  fair  and  ever  young  : 
The  jolly  god  in  triumph  comes  ; 
Sound  the  trumpets  ;  beat  the  drums  : 
Flush'd  with  a  purple  grace 
He  shows  his  honest  face  : 

Now  give  the  hautboys  breath.     He  comes !  he  comes ! 
Bacchus  ever  fair  and  young, 

Drinking  joys  did  first  ordain  ; 
Bacchus,  blessings  are  a  treasure, 
Drinking  is  the  soldier's  pleasure  : 
Rich  the  treasure, 
Sweet  the  pleasure, 
Sweet  is  pleasure  after  pain." — Alexander's  Feast. 

"  High  state  and  honours  to  others  impart, 
But  give  me  your  heart  : 
That  treasure,  treasure  alone, 
I  beg  for  my  own. 
So  gentle  a  love,  so  fervent  a  fire, 
My  soul  does  inspire  ; 
That  treasure,  that  treasure  alone 
I  beg  for  my  own. 

Your  love  let  me  crave  ; 

Give  me  in  possessing 

So  matchless  a  blessing  ; 
That  empire  is  all  I  would  have. 

Love's  my  petition, 

All  my  ambition  ; 

If  e'er  you  discover 

So  faithful  a  lover, 

So  real  a  flame, 

I'll  die,  I'll  die, 

So  give  up  my  game." — The  May  Queen. 

4.  Bold  Personal  Portraiture. — "  Dryden  made  his 
'poem  ['  Absalom  and  Achitophel ']  little  more  than  a  string 
of  such  portraits,  connected  together  by  the  very  slenderest 
cord  of  narrative.  .  .  .  The  strong  antithesis  [of  his 


148  DRYDEN 

form]  and  smart  telling  hits  lent  themselves  to  personal  de- 
scriptions and  attack  with  consummate  ease.  .  .  .  His 
figures  are  always  at  once  types  and  individuals.  It  is  to  be 
noticed  that,  in  drawing  these  satirical  portraits,  the  poet  has 
exercised  a  singular  judgment  in  selecting  his  traits." — George 
Saintsbury. 

"  Now  and  then,  indeed,  he  seizes  a  very  coarse  and  marked 
distinction,  and  gives  us,  not  a  likeness,  but  a  strong  carica- 
ture, in  which  a  single  peculiarity  is  protruded  and  every- 
thing else  is  neglected  ;  like  the  Marquis  of  Granby  at  an 
inn-door,  whom  we  know  by  nothing  but  his  baldness  ;  or 
Wilkes,  who  is  Wilkes  only  in  his  squint." — Macaulay. 

"  The  poem  [<  Absalom  and  Achitophel ']  really  consists  of 
a  set  of  satirical  portraits,  cut  and  polished  like  jewels  and 
flashing  malignant  light  from  all  their  facets.  .  .  .  All 
these  [sketches]  were  drawn  at  full  length  with  a  precision 
never  approached  by  any  of  the  popular  «  character-makers ' 
of  the  preceding  century,  and  in  verse  the  like  of  which  had 
never  been  heard  in  English  for  vigorous  alternation  of  thrust 
and  parry. ' ' — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  Instead  of  unmeaning  caricatures,  he  presents  portraits 
which  cannot  be  mistaken,  however  unfavorable  ideas  they 
may  convey  of  the  originals." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  His  portraits  of  the  English  dramatists  are  wrought  with 
great  spirit  and  diligence.  The  account  of  Shakespeare  may 
stand  as  a  perpetual  model  of  encomiastic  criticism  ;  exact 
without  minuteness  and  lofty  without  exaggeration.  .  .  . 
In  a  few  lines  is  exhibited  a  character  so  extensive  in  its  com- 
prehension and  so  curious  in  its  limitations  that  nothing  can 
be  added,  diminished,  or  referred." — James  Mitford. 

"  The  thing  is  to  strike  the  nail  on  the  head  and  hard,  not 
gracefully.  The  public  must  recognize  the  character,  shout 
their  names  as  they  recognize  the  portraits  [in  '  Absalom  and 
Achitophel '],  applaud  the  attacks  which  are  made  upon  them, 
hurl  them  from  the  high  rank  which  they  covet."  —  Taine. 


DRYDEN 


149 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Now  stop  your  noses,  readers,  all  and  some, 
For  here's  a  tun  of  midnight  work  to  come, 
Og  [Shadwell],  from  a  treason  tavern  rolling  home  ; 
Round  as  a  globe  and  liquored  every  chink, 
Goodly  and  great,  he  sails  behind  his  link. 
With  all  this  bulk,  there's  nothing  lost  in  Og, 
For  every  inch  that  is  not  fool  is  rogue  : 
A  monstrous  mass  of  foul,  corrupted  matter, 
As  all  the  devils  had  spewed  to  make  the  batter." 

— Absalom  and  Achitophel. 

"A  martial  hero  first,  with  early  care, 

Blown,  like  the  pigmy,  by  the  wind  to  war. 

A  beardless  chief,  a  rebel  ere  a  man  : 

So  young  his  hatred  to  his  prince  began. 

Next  this  (how  wildly  will  ambition  steer !) 

A  vermin  wriggling  in  the  Usurper's  ear, 

Bantering  his  venal  wit  for  sums  of  gold, 

He  cast  himself  into  the  saint-like  mould, 

Groan'd,  sigh'd,  and  pray'd,  while  godliness  was  gain, 

The  loudest  bagpipe  of  the  squeaking  train." — The  Medal. 

"  Sir  Fopling  is  a  fool  so  nicely  writ 

The  ladies  would  mistake  him  for  a  wit ; 

And,  when  he  sings,  talks  loud,  and  cocks  would  cry, 

I  vow,  methinbs,  he's  pretty  company  : 

So  brisk,  so  gay,  so  travell'd,  so  refined, 

As  he  took  pains  to  graff  upon  his  kind. 

True  fops  help  nature's  work,  and  go  to  school, 

To  file  and  finish  God  Almighty's  fool. 

Yet  none  Sir  Fopling  him  or  him  can  call  ; 

He's  knight  o'  the  shire,  and  represents  ye  all. 

From  each  he  meets  he  culls  what'er  he  can  ; 

Legion's  his  name,  a  people  in  a  man." 

— Sir  Fopling  Flutter. 

5.  Masculine  Vigor — Incisiveness — Directness. — 

He  is  the  strongest  poet  of  the  age  of  prose,  the  most  vig- 


DRYDEN 

orous  verse-man  between  Milton  and  Wordsworth.  We  may 
say  that  the  muse  of  Dryden  has  a  contralto  and  that  of  Pope 
a  soprano  voice." — Edmund  Gosse. 

"There  are  passages  in  Dryden's  satire  in  which  every 
couplet  has  not  only  the  force  but  the  actual  sound  of  a  slap 
in  the  face.  .  .  .  Dryden  had  a  great  deal  to  say,  and 
said  it  in  the  plain  straightforward  fashion  which  was  of  all 
things  most  likely  to  be  useful  for  the  formation  of  a  work- 
manlike prose  style  in  English.  .  .  .  His  political  and 
dramatic  practice  and  the  studies  which  that  practice  implied 
provided  him  with  an  ample  vocabulary,  a  strong  terse  method 
of  expression,  and  a  dislike  to  archaism,  vulgarity,  or  want  of 
clearness . " — George  Saintsbury. 

"  His  words  invariably  go  straight  to  the  mark  and  not  un- 
frequently  with  a  directness  and  a  force  that  fully  merit  the 
epithet  of '  burning  '  applied  to  them  by  the  poet  Gray.  .  .  . 
Dryden,  who  thought  clearly  and  wrote  forcibly,  who  knew 
always  what  he  had  to  say  and  then  said  it  with  a  directness 
and  a  power.  ...  So  long  as  men  continue  to  delight 
in  vividness  of  expression,  in  majesty  of  numbers,  and  in  mas- 
culine strength  and  all-abounding  vigor,  so  long  will  Dryden 
continue  to  hold  his  present  high  place  among  English  au- 
thors."—71.  R.  Lounsbury. 

"  The  occasional  poetry  of  Dryden  is  marked  strongly  by 
masculine  character.  .  .  .  The  vigor  and  rapidity  with 
which  Dryden  poured  forth  his  animated  satire  plainly  inti- 
mates that  his  mind  was  pleased  with  the  exercise  of  that  for- 
midable power.  It  was  more  easy  for  him  to  write  with  sever- 
ity than  with  forbearance." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  He  writes  boldly  under  the  pressure  of  vehement  ideas  ; 

he  writes  stirring  airs,  which  shake  all  the  senses, 

even  if  they  do  not  sink  deep  into  the  heart.     Such  is  his 

'  Alexander's  Feast,'     ...     an   admirable  trumpet-blast, 

a  masterpiece  of  rapture  and  of  art,  which  Victor 

Hugo  alone  has  come  up  to." — Tame. 


DRYDEN  151 

"  Robustness  is  the  great  characteristic  of  Dryden's  poetry ; 
he  is  often  excessive,  but  it  is  the  excess  of  faculty  not  of  en- 
deavor. Whatever  he  does  is  done  with  solidity  and  superior- 
ity ;  he  dominates  his  subject  and  his  reader,  and  effects  this  by 
the  direct,  unlabored  expression  of  himself." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  He  is  rather  an  energetic  than  a  feeling  writer.  He  has  very 
little  heart  and  a  great  deal  of  nerve." — Hartley  Coleridge. 

"  He  was  thoroughly  manly." — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  thou  [Shaftesbury] ,  the  pander  of  the  people's  hearts, 
O  crooked  soul,  and  serpentine  in  arts, 

What  curses  on  thy  blasted  name  will  fall ! 

Which  age  to  age  their  legacy  shall  call : 

For  all  must  curse  the  woes  that  must  descend  on  all. 

Religion  thou  hast  none  :  thy  mercury 

Has  passed  through  every  sect,  and  theirs  through  thee. 

But  what  thou  giv'st,  that  venom  still  remains, 

And  the  poxed  nation  feel  thee  in  their  brains." 

— A  Satire  against  Sedition. 

"  Without  a  vision  poets  can  foreshow 

What  all  but  fools  by  common-sense  may  know : 
If  true  succession  from  our  isle  should  fail, 
And  crowds  profane  with  impious  arm  prevail, 
Not  thou,  nor  those  thy  factious  arts  engage, 
Shall  reap  that  harvest  of  rebellious  rage, 
With  which  thou  flatterest  thy  decrepit  age. 
The  swelling  poison  of  the  several  sects 
Which,  wanting  vent,  the  nation's  health  infects, 
Shall  burst  its  bag  ;  and,  fighting  out  their  way, 
The  various  venoms  on  each  other  prey. 
The  presbyter,  pufFd  up  with  spiritual  pride, 
Shall  on  the  necks  of  the  lewd  nobles  ride : 
His  brethren  damn,  the  civil  power  defy, 
And  parcel  out  republic  prelacy." 

— A  Satire  against  Sedition. 


52  DRYDEN 

"  Protect  us,  mighty  Providence, 
What  would  these  madmen  have  ? 
First,  they  would  bribe  us  without  pence, 
Deceive  us  without  common-sense, 
And  without  power  enslave. 
Shall  free-born  men,  in  humble  awe, 
Submit  to  servile  shame  ; 
Who  from  consent  and  custom  draw 
The  same  right  to  be  ruled  by  law, 
Which  kings  pretend  to  reign  ?  " 

—  On  the  Young  Statesman. 

6.  Point. — "  He  has  antithesis,  ornamental  epithets, 
finely  wrought  comparisons,  and  all  the  artifices  of  the  liter- 
ary mind.  .  .  .  He  contrasts  ideas  with  ideas,  phrases 
with  phrases.  .  .  .  Closer  ideas,  more  marked  contrasts, 
bolder  images,  only  add  weight  to  the  argument. 
He  has  vigorous  periods,  reflective  antithesis." — Taine. 

"  The  flippant  extravagance  of  point  and  quibble  in  which, 
complying  with  his  age,  he  had  hitherto  indulged." — Sir 
Walter  Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  From  hence  began  that  plot,  the  nation's  curse, 
Bad  in  itself,  but  represented  worse  ; 
Raised  in  extremes  and  in  extremes  decried  ; 
With  oaths  affirm'd,  with  dying  vows  denied  ; 
Not  weigh'd  nor  winnow'd  by  the  multitude  ; 
But  swallow'd  in  the  mass,  unchew'd  and  crude. 
Some  truth  there  was,  but  dash'd  and  brevv'd  with  lies, 
To  please  the  fools  and  puzzle  all  the  wise. 
Succeeding  times  did  equal  folly  call, 
Believing  nothing  or  believing  all." 

— Absalom  and  Achitophel. 

"  Unblamed  for  life,  ambition  set  aside, 

Not  stain'd  with  cruelty,  not  pufPd  with  pride. 

How  happy  had  he  been  if  destiny 

Had  higher  placed  his  birth  or  not  so  high ! 


DRYDEN  153 

His  kingly  virtues  might  have  gain'd  a  throne, 
And  bless'd  all  other  countries  but  his  own. 
But  charming  greatness,  since  so  few  refuse 
'Tis  juster  to  lament  him  than  accuse." 

— Absalom  and  Achitophel. 

* '  Thine  be  the  laurel  then ;  thy  blooming  age 
Can  best,  if  any  can,  support  the  stage  ; 
Which  so  declines  that  shortly  we  may  see 
Players  and  plays  reduced  to  second  infancy. 
Sharp  to  the  world  but  thoughtless  of  renown, 
They  plot  not  on  the  stage  but  on  the  town, 
And,  in  despair  their  empty  pit  to  fill, 
Set  up  some  foreign  monster  in  a  bill. 
Thus  they  jog  on,  still  tricking,  never  thriving, 
And  murdering  plays,  which  they  miscall  reviving." 

— Epistle  to  Mr.  Granvilk. 

7.  Specious  Argument  in  Verse.— "  Dryden  had  a 
faculty  of  specious  argument  in  verse  which,  if  it  falls  short  of 
the  great  Roman's  [Lucretius]  in  logical  exactitude,  hardly 
falls  short  of  it  in  poetical  ornament,  and  excels  it  in  a  sort  of 
triumphant  vivacity  which  hurries  the  reader  along  whether  he 
will  or  no.  ...  Dryden's  didactic  poems  are  quite  un- 
like anything  which  came  before  them,  and  have  never  been 
approached  by  anything  that  has  come  after  them.  Doubtless 
they  prove  nothing ;  .  .  .  but  at  the  same  time  they  have 
a  remarkable  air  of  proving  something.  He  was  at  all  times 
singularly  happy  and  fertile  in  the  art  of  illustration  and  of 
concealing  the  weakness  of  an  argument  in  the  most  convinc- 
ing way  by  a  happy  smile  or  jest.  A  poet  whose  greatest  tri- 
umphs were  won  in  the  fields  of  satire  and  of  argumentative 
verse,  Dryden  had,  in  reality,  a  considerable  touch  of  the 
scholastic  in  his  mind." — Geerge  Saintsbury. 

"If  he  took  up  an  opinion  in  the  morning,  he  would  have 
found  so  many  arguments  for  it  by  night  that  it  would  seem 
already  old  and  familiar.  .  .  .  But  the  charm  of  this  great 
advocate  is  that,  whatever  side  he  was  on,  he  could  always  find 


154  DRYDEN 

reasons  for  it  and  state  them  with  great  force  and  with  abun- 
dance of  happy  illustration.  .  .  .  It  is  Dryden's  excuse 
that  his  characteristic  excellence  is  to  argue  persuasively  and 
powerfully,  whether  in  verse  or  in  prose,  and  that  he  was 
amply  endowed  with  the  most  needful  quality  of  an  advocate 
— to  be  strongly  and  wholly  of  his  present  way  of  thinking, 
whatever  it  might  be.  ...  One  of  the  great  charms  of 
his  best  writing  is  that  everything  seems  struck  off  at  a  heat, 
as  by  a  superior  man  in  the  best  mood  of  his  talk." — Lowell. 

"  The  distinguishing  characteristic  of  Dryden's  genius  seems 
to  have  been  the  power  of  reasoning  and  expressing  the  result 
in  appropriate  language.  .  .  .  The  skill  with  which  they 
[his  arguments]  are  stated,  elucidated,  enforced,  and  exem- 
plified ever  commands  our  admiration,  though  in  the  result 
our  reason  may  reject  their  influence.  .  .  .  His  argu- 
ments, even  in  the  worst  cause,  bear  witness  to  the  energy  of 
his  mental  conceptions." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  Dryden  was  an  incomparable  reasoner  in  verse.  .  .  . 
His  logic  is  by  no  means  uniformly  sound.  .  .  .  His 
arguments,  therefore,  often  are  worthless,  but  the  manner  in 
which  they  are  stated  is  beyond  all  praise." — Macaulay. 

"He  could  not  restrain  himself  from  argument  and  satire 
on  a  subject  that  would  have  induced  most  youthful  poets  to 
luxuriate  in  elegiac  complaints." — -James  Mitford. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  If,  then,  our  faith  we  for  our  guide  admit, 
Vain  is  the  further  search  of  human  wit, 
As  when  the  building  gains  a  surer  stay, 
We  take  the  unuseful  scaffolding  away. 
Reason  by  sense  no  more  can  understand  ; 
The  game  is  played  into  another  hand  ; 
Why  choose  we  then,  like  bilanders,  to  creep 
Along  the  coast,  and  land  in  view  to  keep, 
When  safely  we  may  launch  into  the  deep  ?  " 

—  The  Hind  and  the  Panther. 


DRYDEN  155 

"  For  granting  we  have  sinn'd,  and  that  the  offence 
Of  man  is  made  against  Omnipotence, 
Some  price  that  bears  proportion  must  be  paid, 
And  infinite  with  infinite  be  weigh'd.  . 
See,  then,  the  Deist  lost  :  remorse  for  vice 
Not  paid,  or  paid  inadequate  to  price  : 
What  farther  means  can  Reason  now  direct, 
Or  what  relief  from  human  wit  expect  ? 
That  shows  us  sick  ;  and  sadly  are  we  sure 
Still  to  be  sick,  till  Heaven  reveal  the  cure  : 
If  then  Heaven's  will  must  needs  be  understood, 
(Which  must,  if  we  want  cure,  and  Heaven  be  good), 
Let  all  records  of  will  revealed  be  shown  ; 
With  Scripture  all  in  equal  balance  thrown, 
And  our  one  sacred  book  will  be  that  one." 

— Religio  Laid. 

"  If  those  who  gave  the  sceptre  could  not  tie 
By  their  own  deed  their  own  posterity, 
How  then  could  Adam  bind  his  future  race  ? 
How  could  his  forfeit  on  mankind  take  place  ? 
Or  how  could  heavenly  justice  damn  us  all, 
Who  ne'er  consented  to  our  father's  fall? 
Then  kings  are  slaves  to  those  whom  they  command, 
And  tenants  to  their  people's  pleasure  stand. 
Add,  that  the  power  for  property  allovv'd 
Is  mischievously  seated  in  the  crowd  ; 
For  who  can  be  secure  of  private  right, 
If  sovereign  sway  may  be  dissolved  by  might  ?  " 

— Absalom  and  Achitophel. 

8.  Excessive  Panegyric— Adulation— Bombast.— 

"  He  had  a  tendency  to  bombast,  which,  though  subsequently 
corrected  by  time  and  thought,  was  never  wholly  removed. 
No  writer,  it  must  be  owned,  has  carried  the  flattery  of  dedi- 
cation to  a  greater  length.  .  .  .  But  this  was  not,  we 
suspect,  merely  interested  servility :  it  was  the  overflowing  of 
a  mind  singularly  disposed  to  admiration — of  a  mind  which 
diminished  vices  and  magnified  virtues  and  obligations. 


1 56  DRYDEN 

Bombast  is  his  prevailing  vice — the  exaggeration  which  dis- 
figures the  panegyrics  of  Dryden." — Macaulay. 

"  He  seems  to  have  made  flattery  too  cheap.  ...  He 
appears  never  to  have  impoverished  his  mint  of  flattery  by  his 
expense,  however  lavish.  .  .  .  The  extreme  flattery  of 
Dryden's  dedications  has  been  objected  to  as  a  fault  of  an  op- 
posite description  ;  and  perhaps  no  writer  has  equalled  him  in 
the  profusion  and  elegance  of  his  adulation.  .  .  .  He 
considers  the  great  as  entitled  to  encomiastic  homage,  and 
brings  praise  rather  as  a  tribute  than  a  gift.  ...  In  the 
meanness  and  servility  of  hyperbolical  adulation,  I  know  not 
whether,  since  the  days  in  which  the  Roman  emperors  were 
deified,  he  has  ever  been  equalled,  except  by  Afra  Behn  in  an 
address  to  Eleanor  Gwyn." — Samuel  Johnson. 

"  Dryden  was  one  of  the  most  accomplished  flatterers  that 
ever  lived." — George  Saints  bury. 

"  Although  it  ['Tyrannic  Love  ']  is  perhaps  his  best  heroic 
play,  it  errs  on  the  side  of  rant  and  bombast  to  such  a  degree 
that  the  poet  felt  obliged  to  apologize  for  this  in  the  pro- 
logue.— Edmund  Gosse. 

"Here  lovers  vie  with  each  other  in  metaphors;  there  a 
lover,  in  order  to  magnify  the  beauty  of  his  mistress,  says  that 
bloody  hearts  lie  panting  in  her  hands." — Tame. 

11  Perhaps  no  writer  has  equalled  him  in  the  profusion  and 
elegance  of  his  adulation." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Next  to  the  sacred  temple  you  are  led, 

Where  waits  a  crown  for  your  most  sacred  head  : 
How  justly  from  the  Church  that  crown  is  due, 
Preserved  from  ruin,  and  restored  by  you  ! 
The  grateful  choir  their  harmony  employ, 
Not  to  make  greater  but  more  solemn  joy. 
Wrapt  soft  and  warm,  your  name  is  sent  on  high, 
As  flames  do  on  the  wings  of  insects  fly  : 


DRYDEN  157 

Music  herself  is  lost ;  in  vain  she  brings 
Her  choicest  notes  to  praise  the  best  of  kings  : 
Her  melting  strains  in  you  a  tomb  have  found, 
And  lie  like  bees  in  their  own  sweetness  drown'd. 
He  that  brought  peace,  all  discord  could  atone, 
His  name  is  music  of  itself  alone." 

—  To  Charles  the  Second. 

When  factious  rage  to  cruel  exile  drove 
The  queen  of  beauty  and  the  court  of  love, 
The  muses  drooped  with  their  forsaken  arts, 
And  the  sad  cupids  broke  their  useless  darts  : 

But  now  the  illustrious  nymph,  returned  again, 
Brings  every  grace  triumphant  in  her  train. 
The  wond'ring  Nereids,  though  they  raised  no  storm, 
Foreslovv'd  her  passage,  to  behold  her  form  : 
Some  cried,  '  A  Venus  ! '  some,  '  A  Thetis  pass'd  ! ' 
But  this  was  not  so  fair  nor  that  so  chaste." 

—  To  the  Duchess  of  York  on  Her  Return. 

11  Nature  gave  him,  a  child,  what  men  in  vain 
Oft  strive,  by  art  though  further'd,  to  obtain. 
His  body  was  an  orb,  his  sublime  soul 
Did  move  on  virtue's  and  on  learning's  pole  : 
Whose  regular  motions  better  to  our  view, 
Than  Archimedes'  sphere,  the  heavens  did  shew. 
Graces  and  virtues,  languages  and  arts, 
Beauty  and  learning  fill'd  up  all  the  parts. 
Heaven's  gifts,  which  do  like  falling  stars  appear 
Scatter'd  in  others  ;  all,  as  in  their  sphere. 
Were  fix'd  conglobate  in  his  soul ;  and  thence 
Shone  through  his  body,  with  sweet  influence  ; 
Letting  their  glories  so  on  each  one  fall, 
The  whole  frame  rendered  was  celestial." 

—  The  Death  of  Lord  Hastings. 

9.  Coarseness — Sensuality. — Dryden   has   been  uni- 
versally condemned  for  pandering  to  the  depraved  tastes  of 


158  DRYDEN 

the  age  and  court.  While  his  later  and  better  work  is  less 
open  to  the  charge  of  coarseness,  yet  some  of  it,  like  the 
second  part  of  "  Absalom  and  Achitophel,"  contains,  as 
Saintsbury  says,  "some  of  his  greatest  licenses  of  expres- 
sion." 

"  The  license  of  his  comedy  .  .  .  had  for  it  only 
the  apology  of  universal  example,  and  must  be  lamented 
though  not  excused.  .  .  .  Dryden's  indelicacy  is  like 
the  forced  impudence  of  a  bashful  man." — Sir  Walter 
Scott. 

"  The  characters  in  Dryden's  plays  are  nothing  but  gross, 
selfish,  unblushing,  lying  libertines  of  both  sexes. 
The  comic    characters  are,  without  mixture,   loathsome  and 
despicable. ' '  — Macaulay. 

"  He  squatted  clumsily  in  the  filth  in  which  others  simply 
sported.     .     .      .     He  made  himself  petulant  of  set  purpose. 
Nothing  is  more  nauseous  than  studied  lewdness,  and  Dryden 
studied    everything,    even    pleasantness    and    politeness."- 
Taine. 

"  His  works  afford  too  many  examples  of  dissolute  licen- 
tiousness and  abject  adulation ;  but  they  were  probably  like 
his  merriment,  artificial  and  constrained — the  effects  of  study 
and  meditation,  and  his  trade  rather  than  his  pleasure.  Of 
the  mind  that  can  trade  in  corruption,  and  can  deliberately 
pollute  itself  with  ideal  wickedness  for  the  sake  of  spreading 
the  contagion  in  society,  I  wish  not  to  conceal  nor  excuse  the 
depravity.  Such  degradation  of  genius,  such  abuse  of  super 
lative  abilities,  cannot  be  contemplated  but  with  grief  and  in- 
dignation. ' ' — Samuel  Johnson. 

"  The  coarseness  of  Dryden's  plays  is  unpardonable. 
.  .  .  It  is  deliberate,  it  is  unnecessary,  it  is  a  positive 
defect  in  art." — George  Saintsbury. 

11  Dryden's  satire  is  often  coarse,  but  where  it  is  coarsest 
it  is  commonly  in  defence  of  himself  against  attacks  that  were 
themselves  brutal," — Lowell. 


DRYDEN  159 

Those  who  care  to  seek  illustrations  of  Dry  den's  coarseness 
will  find  striking  instances  in  his  "Absalom  and  Achitophel," 
Book  I.,  lines  i  to  10,  and  Book  II.,  lines  467  to  480,  in  his 
"  Epistle  to  Mr.  Southern,"  and  in  his  extant  plays. 

10.  Pedantry — Vanity. — If  Dryden  mostly  wanted  that 
inspiration  which  comes  of  belief  in  and  devotion  to  some- 
thing nobler  and  more  abiding  than  the  present  moment  and 
its  petulant  need,  he  had  at  least  the  next  best  thing  to  that 
— a  thorough  faith  in  himself.  .  .  .  He  is  always  hand- 
somely frank  in  telling  us  whatever  of  his  own  doing  pleased 
him." — Lowell. 

"  He  never  forgets  that,  as  Matthew  Arnold  has  said,  he 
is  the  puissant  and  glorious  founder  of  our  excellent  and  indis- 
pensable eighteenth  century — that  is  to  say,  of  an  age  of 
prose  and  reason." — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  Certainly  '  modest '  and  '  diffident '  are  not  exactly  the 
adjectives  for  those  qualities  which  one  discerns  as  uppermost 
in  the  writings,  verse  and  prose,  of 'Glorious  John,'  the  master 
of  the  '  full-resounding  '  line.  .  .  .  There  is  a  great  deal 
of  self-assertion  and  an  overbearing  contempt  and  brow-beat- 
ing of  other  men,  their  persons,  intellect,  performances,  and 
opinions." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  He  descends  to  display  his  knowledge  with  pedantic 
ostentation.  .  .  .  His  vanity  now  and  then  betrays  his 
ignorance.  .  .  .  He  had  a  vanity  unworthy  of  his  abili- 
ties, to  show,  as  may  be  suspected,  the  rank  of  the  company 
with  whom  he  lived,  by  the  use  of  French  words  which  had 
then  crept  into  conversation.  .  .  .  His  faults  of  negli- 
gence are  beyond  recital.  What  he  thought  sufficient  he  did 
not  stop  to  make  better,  and  allowed  himself  to  leave  many 
parts  unfinished,  in  confidence  that  his  good  lines  would 
overbalance  the  bad." — Samuel  Johnson. 

"And  so  he  translated  Virgil  not  only  into  English  but 
into  Dryden  ;  and  so  he  was  kind  enough  to  translate  Chaucer 


l6o  DRYDEN 

too,  as  an  example,  .  .  .  and  cheated  the  readers  of  the 
old  'Knight's  Tale'  of  sundry  of  their  tears." — Mrs. 
Browning. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Let  this  suffice  :  nor  thou,  great  saint,  refuse 
This  humble  tribute  of  no  vulgar  muse  ; 
Who,  not  by  cares  or  wants  or  age  depress'd, 
Stems  a  wild  deluge  with  a  dauntless  breast ; 
And  dares  to  sing  thy  praises  in  a  clime 
Where  vice  triumphs,  and  virtue  is  a  crime  ; 
Where  even  to  draw  the  picture  of  thy  mind 
Is  satire  on  the  most  of  human  kind  : 
Take  it,  while  yet  'tis  praise  ;  before  my  rage, 
Unsafely  just,  break  loose  on  this  bad  age  ; 
So  bad  that  thou  thyself  hadst  no  defence 
From  vice  but  barely  by  departing  hence." — Eleonora. 

"  Our  author,  by  experience,  finds  it  true, 
'Tis  much  more  hard  to  please  himself  than  you : 
And  out  of  no  feign'd  modesty,  this  day 
Damns  his  laborious  trifle  of  a  play  : 
Not  that  it's  worse  than  what  before  he  writ ; 
But  he  has  now  another  taste  of  wit ; 
And,  to  confess  a  truth,  though  out  of  time, 
Grows  weary  of  his  long-loved  mistress,  Rhyme. 
Passions  too  fierce  to  be  in  fetters  bound, 
And  nature  flies  him  like  enchanted  ground  : 
What  verse  can  do,  he  has  performed  in  this, 
Which  he  presumes  the  most  correct  of  his  ; 
But  spite  of  all  his  pride,  a  secret  shame 
Invades  his  breast  at  Shakespeare's  sacred  name." 

— Prologue  to  Aurengzebe. 

11  Dulness  is  decent  in  the  church  and  state. 
But  I  forget  that  still  't  is  understood, 
Bad  plays  are  best  described  by  showing  good. 
Sit  silent  then,  that  my  pleased  soul  may  see 
A  judging  audience  once,  and  worthy  me  ; 


DRYDEN  l6l 

My  faithful  scene  from  true  records  shall  tell, 
How  Trojan  valour  did  the  Greek  excel ; 
Your  great  forefathers  shall  their  fame  regain, 
And  Homer's  angry  ghost  repine  in  vain." 

— Prologue  to  Troilus  and  Cressida. 

ii.  Precision — Mastery  of  Language. — "  He  had, 
beyond  most,  the  gift  of  the  right  word.  And  if  he  does  not, 
like  one  or  two  of  the  great  masters  of  song,  stir  one's  sympa- 
thies by  that  indefinable  aroma  so  magical  in  arousing  the 
subtle  associations  of  the  soul,  he  has  this  in  common  with 
the  few  great  writers,  the  winged  seeds  of  his  thoughts  embed 
themselves  in  the  memory  and  germinate  there.  .  .  .  But 
his  strong  sense,  his  command  of  the  happy  word,  his  wit, 
which  is  distinguished  by  a  certain  breadth  and,  as  it  were, 
power  of  generalization,  as  Pope's  by  keenness  of  edge  and 
point,  were  his  whether  he  would  or  no.  .  .  .  Pithy 
sentences  and  phrases  always  drop  from  Dryden's  pen  as  if 
unawares. ' ' — Lowell. 

11  He  was  the  first  writer  under  whose  skillful  management 
the  scientific  vocabulary  fell  into  natural  and  pleasing  verse. 
— Macaulay. 

11  No  English  poet,  perhaps  no  English  writer,  has  attained 
as  regards  expression  such  undisputed  excellence."— -James 
Mitford. 

"  Great  Dryden  next  whose  tuneful  muse  affords 
The  sweetest  numbers  and  the  fittest  words." — Addison. 

"  Dryden  purifies  his  own  [style]  and  renders  it  more  clear 
by  introducing  close  reasoning  and  precise  words. 
He  bounds  it  [his  thought]  with  exact  terms  justified  by  the 
dictionary,  with  simple  constructions  justified  by  the  gram- 
mar, that  the  reader  may  have  at  every  step  a  method  of  veri- 
fication and  a  source  of  clearness. " — Taine. 

"The  felicity  of  his  language,  the  richness  of  his  illustra- 
tions, and  the  depth  of  his  reflections,  often  supplied  what 
the  scene  wanted  in  natural  passion." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

XI 


l62  DRYDEN 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Three  poets  in  three  distant  ages  born 
Greece,  Italy,  and  England  did  adorn. 
The  first  in  loftiness  of  thought  surpass'd  ; 
The  next  in  majesty ;  in  both  the  last. 
The  force  of  nature  could  no  further  go  ; 
To  make  a  third  she  join'd  the  former  two." 

—  Under  the  Portrait  of  John  Milton. 

Some  lazy  ages,  lost  in  sleep  and  ease, 

No  action  leave  to  busy  chronicles : 

Such,  whose  supine  felicity  but  makes 

In  story  chasms,  in  epoch  mistakes  ; 

O'er  whom  Time  gently  shakes  his  wings  of  down, 

Till  with  his  silent  sickle  they  are  mown." 

— Astrcea  Redux. 

Whatever  happy  region  is  thy  place, 

Cease  thy  celestial  song  a  little  space ; 

Thou  wilt  have  time  enough  for  hymns  divine, 

Since  heaven's  eternal  year  is  thine. 

Hear  then  a  mortal  Muse  thy  praise  rehearse, 

In  no  ignoble  verse  ; 

But  such  as  thy  own  voice  did  practise  here, 

When  thy  first  fruits  of  poesy  were  given ; 

To  make  thyself  a  welcome  inmate  there  : 

While  yet  a  young  probationer, 

And  candidate  of  heaven." 

— An  Ode  to  Mrs.  Anne  Killi^rew. 


POPE,  1688-1744 

Biographical  Outline. — Alexander  Pope,  born  in  Lom- 
bard Street,  London,  May  21,  1688  ;  father  a  Roman  Cath- 
olic linen  draper,  in  comfortable  circumstances,  who  lived, 
after  1700,  at  Binfield  in  Windsor  Forest;  Pope  is  a  preco- 
cious child,  and  is  nicknamed  "  the  little  nightingale  "  because 
of  the  sweetness  of  his  voice ;  in  his  eighth  year  he  begins 
Latin  and  Greek  with  a  priest  as  tutor,  and  in  his  ninth  year 
he  enters  a  Roman  Catholic  school  at  Twyford,  near  Win- 
chester ;  later  he  attends  school  at  Marylebone  and  at  Hyde 
Park  Corner ;  he  was  remembered  at  Twyford  because  he  was 
once  whipped  for  satirizing  the  master  ;  in  his  eleventh  year 
a  severe  illness,  brought  on  "by  perpetual  application,"  ruins 
his  health  and  distorts  his  figure  ;  after  a  few  months  at 
school  he  returns  to  his  father's  home,  and  is  placed  for  a 
time  under  another  priest-tutor,  but  is  soon  left  to  pursue  his 
studies  entirely  by  himself ;  he  reads  voraciously  and,  accord- 
ing to  his  own  statement,  studies  Greek,  Latin,  French,  Ital- 
ian, and  the  English  poets  with  as  much  zest  as  "  a  boy  gath- 
ering flowers  ;  "  he  begins  early  to  imitate  his  favorite  authors, 
and  in  his  twelfth  year  makes  "  a  kind  of  play  "  from  Olgiby's 
translation  of  Homer,  which  is  acted  by  his  school-fellows ; 
he  "does  nothing  but  read  and  write  ;  "  during  1701-1703 
he  writes  an  epic  poem  entitled  "Alexander,"  which  he 
burns  in  1717,  with  Atterbury's  approval  ;  about  1702  (when 
he  is  but  fourteen)  he  makes  also  a  translation  from  Statins, 
which  he  published  in  1712;  during  his  boyhood  he  also 
makes  several  other  translations  from  the  classics  and  from 
Chaucer. 

In  his  fifteenth  year  he  goes  to  London  to  study  French 

163 


i 64  POPE 

and  Italian,  but  too  severe  application  brings  on  an  illness 
nearly  fatal ;  he  regains  health  through  daily  rides,  and  early 
begins  to  court  the  acquaintance  of  men  of  letters,  who  gen- 
erally receive  him  with  encouragement ;  he  is  especially 
aided  by  Sir  William  Trumbull,  William  Walsh,  and  Wych- 
erley;  he  writes  his  "Pastorals"  before  he  is  eighteen,  and 
publishes  one  of  them  in  1706,  at  the  request  of  Tonson  ;  he 
is  much  influenced  by  Wycherley,  eighteen  years  his  senior, 
whom  Pope  says  he  followed  about  "  like  a  dog  ;  "  he  becomes 
first  known  to  the  literary  world  in  general  through  the  publi- 
cation of  his  "  Pastorals"  in  1709;  these  are  favorably  received, 
and  in  May,  1711,  he  publishes,  anonymously,  his  "  Essay  on 
Criticism  ;  "  the  "  Essay  "  is  satirized  by  Dennis,  but  is  praised 
by  Addison,  whom  Pope  soon  afterward  meets  through  the 
good  offices  of  Steele,  already  an  acquaintance  of  Pope's ;  his 
"Messiah  "  is  first  published  May  14,  1712,  in  the  Spectator ; 
during  the  same  year  his  "  Rape  of  the  Lock  "  and  some  of 
his  minor  poems  appear  in  the  "  Miscellanies,"  published  by 
Lintot ;  "The  Rape  of  the  Lock"  is  warmly  praised  by 
Addison,  and  is  revised,  greatly  enlarged,  and  published  by  it- 
self in  1714,  adding  much  to  Pope's  reputation. 

In  March,  1712-13,  he  publishes  his  "Cooper's  Hill," 
partly  written  during  boyhood,  which,  by  its  political  charac- 
ter, wins  for  Pope  the  friendship  of  Swift ;  he  also  writes  the 
prologue  for  Addison's  "  Cato,"  which  was  produced  April  13, 
1713,  but,  through  literary  intrigues  most  discreditable  to  Pope, 
his  friendliness  toward  Addison  is  soon  turned  into  hatred; 
about  this  time  he  is  introduced  by  Swift  to  Arbuthnot,  and 
with  these  two  and  Gay,  Parnell,  Congreve,  and  others,  he 
helps  to  form  the  famous  "Scriblerus  Club;  "  in  October, 
1713,  after  encouragement  by  Addison,  Swift,  and  many 
others,  Pope  publishes  proposals  for  a  translation  of  Homer's 
"Iliad;"  the  proposal  is  received  with  enthusiasm  by  both 
Whig  and  Tory  writers,  and  the  first  four  books  of  Pope's 
"Iliad"  appear  in  1715  ;  other  volumes  follow  in  1716,  1717, 


POPE  165 

1718,  and  two  in  1720  ;  all  six  volumes  are  sold  for  a  guinea 
each,  and  the  first  edition  brings  to  Pope  the  unprecedented 
sum  of  £5,000,  thus  making  him  financially  independent  for 
life ;  a  contemporary  translation  of  the  first  book  of  the 
"  Iliad  "  by  Tickell  is  attributed  by  Pope  to  Addison,  and  this 
probably  gave  rise  to  Pope's  stricture  on  his  former  friend 
ending  with  the  famous  couplet, 

"  Who  but  must  laugh  if  such  a  man  there  be  ? 
Who  would  not  weep  if  Atticus  were  he  ?  " 

By  the  time  of  the  publication  of  the  sixth  volume  of  his 
"  Iliad,"  Pope  had  become  acknowledged  as  the  leader  among 
Englishmen  of  letters  then  living ;  although  his  Greek  schol- 
arship was  known  to  be  somewhat  superficial,  his  literary  and 
financial  success  gave  him  high  social  rank,  and  he  became  a 
welcome  guest  at  many  noble  houses;  in  April,  1716,  his 
father's  family  leave  Binfield  and  settle  in  Chiswick,  near 
many  of  Pope's  aristocratic  friends;  his  father  dies  in  1717, 
and  in  1719  Pope  buys  the  lease  of  a  house  with  five  acres  of 
land  at  Twickenham,  where  he  resides  during  the  rest  of  his 
life  ;  he  invests  in  the  famous  South  Sea  scheme,  sells  out  be- 
fore the  collapse,  and  makes  some  money  by  the  speculation ; 
about  1719  he  begins  his  famous  correspondence  with  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montague  and  Martha  Blount,  both  of  whom 
had  great  influence  on  Pope's  life ;  the  popular  report  of  his 
love-affair,  based  on  his  "  Lines  to  an  Unfortunate  Lady  " 
(published  with  other  poems  in  1717),  is  now  known  to  have 
been  entirely  unfounded  ;  the  volume  published  in  1717  con- 
tained his  "  Eloisa  and  Abelard  "  and  his  "  Ode  on  St. 
Cecilia's  Day;  "  in  1722  occurs  his  famous  and  bitter  quarrel 
with  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montague,  who  then  lived  near  him 
at  Twickenham — a  quarrel  supposed  to  have  grown  out  of 
contempt  manifested  by  the  lady  toward  Pope  after  a  supposed 
declaration  of  love  on  his  part ;  his  relations  with  Martha 


i66  POPE 

and  Teresa  Blount,  his  friends  and  neighbors,  continued  for 
years,  and  seem  to  have  been  purely  platonic. 

In  1722  Pope  edits  the  poems  of  Parnell,  and  begins  for 
Tonson  an  edition  of  Shakespeare,  which  is  published  in  1725 
with  little  success;  about  1724  Pope  begins  his  translation  of 
the  "  Odyssey,"  aided  by  William  Broome  and  by  Elijah  Fen- 
ton,  who  translates  twelve  of  the  twenty-four  books ;  three 
volumes  of  the  "  Odyssey  "  were  published  in  1725,  and  two 
more  in  1727,  the  whole  bringing  to  Pope  about  ,£3,800  ;  a 
bitter  quarrel  results  with  Broome,  who  was  dissatisfied  with 
his  share  of  the  profits,  and  who  was  later  attacked  by  Pope  in 
his  "Bathos;"  in  1725,  when  Bolingbroke  returns  from 
exile,  he  settles  at  Danley,  near  Twickenham,  and  renews  his 
intimacy  with  Pope  ;  in  the  summer  of  1726  Swift  visits  Lon- 
don on  Pope's  invitation,  and  Pope  arranges  for  the  publica- 
tion of  "Gulliver's  Travels;  "  about  this  time  Bolingbroke, 
Arbuthnot,  Lord  Oxford,  Swift,  and  Pope  unite  in  writing 
three  volumes  of  "Miscellanies,"  two  volumes  of  which  were 
published  in  June,  1727;  Swift  is  Pope's  guest  again  in 
1727  ;  the  third  volume  of  the  "  Miscellanies  "  is  published 
in  March,  1727-28,  and  contains  Pope's  satire  "Bathos;" 
it  is  supposed  that  Pope  intended  in  "Bathos"  to  irritate 
the  future  victims  of  his  "  Dunciad  "  into  retorts,  and  the 
satire  had  that  effect;  the  "  Dunciad  "  appeared  May  28, 
1728,  and  was  published  anonymously,  purporting  to  have 
been  addressed  to  a  friend  of  Pope's  in  answer  to  the  attacks 
provoked  by  "  Bathos ;  "  a  second  edition  of  the  "  Dunciad  " 
appeared  in  1729,  but  the  poem  was  not  acknowledged  till  it 
appeared  among  Pope's  works  in  1735. 

Stung  by  the  retorts  of  the  victims  of  the  "Dunciad," 
Pope  founds,  anonymously,  the  Grub  Street  Journal,  and 
continues  it  until  1737  ;  he  is  induced  to  withdraw  from  this 
dirty  warfare  by  Bolingbroke,  whom  he  reverenced,  and  to- 
gether they  plan  an  elaborate  series  of  poems ;  the  result  is 
Pope's  "  Essay  on  Man  "  and  his  "  Moral  Essays;  "  the  first 


POPE  167 

of  the  "Moral  Essays" — that  on  Taste — was  published  in 
1731,  and  the  second — on  Riches — and  third — on  the  Charac- 
ters of  Men — in  1733  ;  the  fourth — on  the  Characters  of 
Women — was  written  as  early  as  1733,  but  was  not  published 
till  1735  ;  the  first  part  of  the  "  Essay  on  Man  "  appeared  in 
1733  and  the  second  in  1734,  both  anonymously;  Boling- 
broke  is  supposed  to  have  supplied  "the  philosophic  stamina" 
of  the  "  Essay  on  Man  ;  "  the  "  Universal  Prayer  "  was  add- 
ed to  the  "Essay"  in  1738;  at  Bolingbroke's  suggestion, 
in  1733,  Pope  translates  the  first  Satire  of  the  second  Book  of 
Horace  "  in  a  morning  or  two,"  and  it  is  published  soon  af- 
terward ;  a  gross  insult  to  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montague  con- 
tained in  the  satire  leads  to  another  bitter  quarrel  between 
Pope  and  her  friends,  and  results  in  Pope's  famous  "  Letter  to 
a  Noble  Lord  "  (suppressed  during  his  life)  and  in  his  "Epis- 
tle to  Arbuthnot,"  published  in  January,  1734-35,  which  is 
now  regarded  as  Pope's  masterpiece ;  after  a  series  of  most 
elaborate  and  contemptible  manoeuvres  on  his  part,  Pope's  cor- 
respondence is  published  in  May,  1737,  and  the  imaginary 
.correspondence  there  attributed  to  Addison,  Steele,  and  Con- 
greve  produces  for  years  in  the  public  mind  the  utmost  con- 
fusion as  to  the  relations  of  these  four  men  of  letters ;  Pope's 
deception  in  this  whole  matter  was  accidentally  discovered 
over  a  century  later  ;  the  publication  of  Pope's  letter  to  Swift, 
in  1741,  was  the  outcome  of  a  still  more  disgusting  intrigue 
on  Pope's  part,  in  which  he  had  multiplied  falsehood  upon 
falsehood ;  his  changing  political  opinions  at  this  period  are 
portrayed  in  his  "  Epistle  to  Augustus,"  which  was  published 
in  March,  1737  ;  he  had  been  visited  by  the  Prince  of  Wales 
two  years  before,  and  his  two  dialogues,  called  eventually 
"  Epilogues  to  the  Satires,"  published  in  1738,  were  written 
in  answer  to  an  attack  on  the  Government. 

After  Bolingbroke  retired  to  France  in  1736,  his  place  as 
Mentor  to  Pope  was  taken  by  Warburton,  who  had  defended 
Pope  in  a  series  of  letters  replying  to  strictures  upon  the 


i 68  POPE 

"Essay  on  Man;"  Pope  and  Warburton  visit  Oxford  to- 
gether in  1741,  and  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  is  offered  to  Pope, 
but  he  declines  it  because  a  proposed  D.D.  is  refused  to  War- 
burton  ;  at  Warburton's  suggestion  Pope  now  undertakes  to 
complete  the  "  Dunciad  "  with  a  fourth  book,  which  is  pub- 
lished in  March,  1742  ;  it  is  not  received  with  favor,  and  a 
criticism  of  it  by  Colley  Gibber  in  his  "  Rehearsal  "  leads  to 
another  bitter  personal  quarrel ;  a  complete  edition  of  the 
"Dunciad,"  with  notes  by  Warburton,  was  published  in  1742, 
and  contained  several  changes,  including  the  substitution  of 
Gibber  for  Theobald  as  the  hero  of  the  poem  and  the  attack 
on  Bentley;  Pope  spends  much  of  his  time  during  his  last 
three  years  in  visiting  at  country-houses  ;  he  revises  his  works, 
and  again  entertains  Bolingbroke  at  Twickenham  ;  he  dies  at 
Twickenham,  May  30,  1744,  and  is  buried  in  Twickenham 
church;  to  Martha  Blount,  who  had  been  attentive  to  his 
comfort  till  the  last,  he  leaves  ^£1,000  and  the  income  from 
his  property  during  her  life. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   CRITICISM   ON   POPE. 

Stephen,  L.,  "Hours  in  a  Library."    New  York,  1894,  Putnams,  I  :  94- 

137. 
Hazlitt,  Wm.,  "  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,  1884,  Bell, 

94-108. 
St.  Beuve,  C.  A.,  "English  Portraits."     New  York,  1875,  Holt,  277- 

305. 
De   Quincey,    T.,    "Works."     Edinburgh,    1890,  Black,   4:237-288; 

ii  :  21-35  and  51-156. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicta."     New  York,  1887,  2  :  52-109. 
Kingsley,  C.,   "  Literary  and   General    Lectures."     New    York,   1890, 

Macmillan,  71-78. 
Gosse,  E.,  "History  of  Eighteenth  Century    Literature."  New  York, 

1889,  Macmillan,  105-134. 
Reed,  H.,  "British  Poets."     Philadelphia,   1857,  Parry  &  Macmillan, 

1:303-321. 
Lowell,  J.   R.,    "Works."     Boston,    1891,   Houghton,    Mifflin  &  Co., 

4:1-58. 


POPE  169 

Browning,  E.  B.,  "Essays  on  the  Poets."     New  York,  1863,   Miller, 

201-207. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  "Lives  of  the  Poets."     London,  1878,  Moxon,  109- 

134- 

Tuckerman,  H.  T.,  "  Thoughts  on  the  Poets."     New  York,  1846,  Fran- 
cis, 73-83. 
Dennis,  J.,  "  Studies  in  English  Literature."    London,  1876,  Stamford, 

i-76. 
Howitt,  Wm.,  "Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,  1863, 

Routledge. 
Dawson,  G.,  "Biographical    Lectures."     London,   1886,   Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  225-235. 
Lang,  A.,  "Letters  to  Dead  Authors."     New  York,  1892,  Longmans, 

Green,  &  Co.,  40-47. 
Hannay,  J.,  "  Satires  and  Satirists."     New  York,  1855,  Redfield,  151- 

158. 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "  A  Manual  of  English  Literature."    New  York,  1893, 

Harper,  I  :  453~499- 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  " Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  185-194. 
Taine,   H.  A.,  "History  of  English  Literature."     New  York,    1875, 

Holt,  374-388. 
Oliphant,   Mrs.,  "Sketches  of  the  Reign  of  George  II."     Edinburgh, 

1859,  Blackwood,  263-323. 
Stephen,  L.,  "  English  Men  of  Letters."     New  York,  1880,  Harper,  v. 

index. 
Ward,  T.   H.,  "English   Poets,"  (Pattison).     New   York,  1881,  Mac- 

millan. 
Warton,  J.,   "The  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope."      London,    1806, 

Maiden,  2  vols. 

Williams,  H.,  "  English  Letters."     London,  1886,  Bell,  I  :  275-348. 
Johnson,  S.,  "  Lives  of  the  Poets  "  (Arnold).     New  York,  1889,  Holt, 

327-455. 

Dial  (Chicago),  22  :  245-246  (E.  E.  Hale,  Jr.). 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  6  :  713-716  (H.  T.  Tuckerman). 

Cornhill  Magazine,  28  :  583-604  (L.  Stephen). 

Blacktvood's  Magazine,  57  :  369-400  (J.  Wilson). 

Fraser's  Magazine,  48  :  452-466  (C.  Kingsley):  83:284-301  (L.  Ste- 
phen). 

Taifs  Magazine,  1 8  :  407-        (T.  De  Quincey). 

North  American  Review,  13  :  450-473  (W.  H.  Prescott) ;  1 12  :  178-217 
Q.  R.  Lowell). 


I/O  POPE 

Scribner's  Magazine,  3  :  533~55°  (A.  Dobson). 

Macmillan's    Magazine,    58:385-392    (W.    Minto)  ;  61:176-185    (W. 
Minto). 


//choi 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

Conciseness  —  Terseness  —  Exactness. — "  I 

chose  verse,"  says  Pope  in  his  *  Design  of  an  Essay  on  Man,' 
"  because  I  could  express  them  [ideas]  more  shortly  this  way 
than  in  prose  itself." 

"  If  the  ideas  are  mediocre,  the  art  of  expressing  them  is 
truly  marvellous.  .  .  .  Every  word  is  effective ;  every 
passage  must  be  read  slowly ;  every  epithet  is  an  epitome ;  a 
more  condensed  style  was  never  written.  .  .  .  Never 
was  familiar  knowledge  expressed  in  words  more  effective,  in 
style  more  condensed,  in  melody  more  sweet,  in  contrasts 
more  striking,  in  embellishments  more  blazing.  [His  style 
is  characterized  as]  refined,  ornate,  antithetical,  pointed, 
terse,  regular,  graceful,  musical." — Taine. 

"One  can  open  upon  wit  and  epigram  at  any  page.  In- 
deed, I  think  that  one  gets  a  little  tired  of  the  invariable  this 
set  off  by  the  inevitable  that,  and  wishes  antithesis  would  let 
him  have  a  little  quiet  now  and  then.  ...  In  all  of  these 
[quotations]  we  notice  that  terseness  in  which  (regard  being 
had  to  his  especial  range  of  thought)  Pope  has  never  been 
excelled.  .  .  .  The  *  Essay  on  Man  '  proves  only  two 
things  beyond  a  question — that  Pope  was  not  a  great  thinker 
and  that,  wherever  he  found  a  thought,  no  matter  what,  he 
could  express  it  so  tersely,  so  clearly,  and  with  such  smooth- 
ness of  versification,  as  to  give  it  everlasting  currency.  .  .  . 
The  accuracy  on  which  Pope  prided  himself,  and  for  which 
Jie  is  commended,  was  not  accuracy  of  thought  so  much  as  of 
ex  pressi  on . "  — Lowell. 

"There  is  something  charming  even  to  an  enemy's  ear  in 
this  exquisite  balancing  of  sounds  and  phrases,  these  'shining 
rows'  of  oppositions  and  appositions,  this  glorifying  of  com- 


POPE  1 7 1 

monplaces  by  antithetic  processes,  this  catching  in  the  re- 
bound, of  emphasis  upon  rhyme  and  rhyme;  all,  in  short,  of 
this  Indian  jugglery  and  Indian  carving  upon  cherry-stones!  " 
— Mrs.  Browning. 

"Pope  has  regularly  crowded  the  utmost  thought  into  the 
smallest  space.  This  is  the  principle  of  his  method.  How 
many  judicious  and  pointed  remarks,  eternally  true,  do  I 
glean  when  reading  his  works,  and  how  they  are  expressed  in 
a  brief,  concise,  elegant  manner,  once  for  all !  ' ' — St.  Beuve. 

"The  charm  of  Pope's  best  passages,  when  it  does  not 
rest  upon  his  Dutch  picturesqueness  of  touch,  is  due  to  the 
intellectual  pleasure  given  by  his  adroit  and  stimulating  man- 
ner of  producing  his  ideas  and  by  the  astonishing  exactitude 
and  propriety  of  his  phrase.  When  it  is  all  summed  up,  we 
may  not  be  much  wiser,  but  we  are  sure  to  be  much  the 
brighter  and  alerter." — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  The  portraits  in  Pope's  'Essay  on  Man'  are  masterpieces 
of  English  versification,  medals  cut  with  such  sharp  outlines 
and  such  vigor  of  hand  that  they  have  lost  none  of  their 
freshness  by  lapse  of  time.  .  .  .  Pope's  wit  is  of  that 
perfect  kind  which  does  not  seem  to  be  sought  for  its  own 
sake  but  to  be  the  appropriate  vehicle  for  the  meaning.  We 
are  not  made  to  feel  that  he  is  constraining  himself  to  write  in 
couplets,  but  that  his  couplets  are  the  shape  in  which  he  can 
best  make  his  thoughts  tell." — Mark  Pattison. 

11  When  Pope  is  at  his  best  every  word  tells.  His  precision 
and  firmness  of  touch  enable  him  to  get  the  greatest  possible 
meaning  into  a  narrow  compass." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  He  examined  lines  and  words  with  minute  and  punctili- 
ous observation,  and  retouched  every  part  with  indefatigable 
diligence,  till  he  had  nothing  left  to  be  forgiven.  .  .  . 
The  dilatory  caution  of  Pope  enabled  him  to  condense  his 
sentiments,  to  multiply  his  images,  and  to  accumulate  all  that 
study  might  produce  or  chance  might  supply." — Samuel 
Johnson. 


POPE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Pleasures  the  sex,  as  children  birds,  pursue, 
Still  out  of  reach,  yet  never  out  of  view  ; 
Sure,  if  they  catch,  to  spoil  the  toy  at  most, 
To  covet  flying  and  regret  when  lost : 

See  how  the  world  its  veterans  rewards  ! 
A  youth  of  frolics,  an  old  age  of  cards  ; 
Fair  to  no  purpose,  artful  to  no  end, 
Young  without  lovers,  old  without  a  friend  ; 
A  fop  their  passion,  but  their  prize  a  sot." 

—  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

Great  Nature  spoke  ;  observant  men  obey'd  ; 

Cities  were  built,  societies  were  made  : 

Here  rose  a  little  state  ;  another  near 

Grew  by  like  means,  and  join'd  through  love  or  fear. 

Did  here  the  trees  with  ruddier  burthens  bend, 

And  there  the  streams  in  purer  rills  descend  ? 

What  war  could  ravish,  commerce  could  bestow, 

And  he  returned  a  friend,  who  came  a  foe. 

Converse  and  love,  mankind  may  strongly  draw, 

When  love  was  liberty,  and  nature  law. 

Thus  states  were  formed  ;  the  name  of  king  unknown, 

Till  common  interest  placed  the  sway  in  one. 

'Twas  VIRTUE  ONLY  (or  in  arts  or  arms, 

Diffusing  blessings,  or  averting  harms), 

The  same  which  in  a  sire  the  sons  obey'd, 

A  prince  the  father  of  a  people  made." 

— Essay  on  Man. 

"  Happy  the  man  whose  wish  and  care 

A  few  paternal  acres  bound, 
Content  to  breathe  his  native  air 
In  his  own  ground. 

Whose  herds  with  milk,  whose  fields  with  bread, 

Whose  flocks  supply  him  with  attire, 
Whose  trees  in  summer  yield  him  shade, 

In  winter  fire. 


POPE  173 

Blest,  who  can  unconcern'dly  find 
Hours  days  and  years  slide  soft  away 

In  health  of  body,  peace  of  mind, 
Quiet  by  day."—  Ode  on  Solitude. 


2.  Point — Balance— Epigram.— "  The  antitheses  fol- 
low each  other  in  couples  like  a  succession  of  columns ; 
thirteen  couples  form  a  suite ;  and  the  last  is  raised  above 
the  rest  by  a  word,  which  concentrates  and  combines  all." — 
Taine. 

"  Pope  must  be  allowed  to  have  established  a  style  of  his 
own,  in  which  he  is  without  a  rival.  ...  In  other  hands 
this  prolongation  of  the  same  form  is  tame ;  in  Pope's  it  in- 
terests us,  so  much  variety  is  there  in  the  arrangement  and 
the  adornments.  In  one  place  the  antithesis  is  comprised  in 
a  single  line,  in  another  it  occupies  two ;  now  it  is  in  the 
substantives,  now  in  the  adjectives  and  verbs ;  now  only  in 
the  ideas ;  now  it  penetrates  the  sound  and  position  of  the 
words.  In  vain  we  see  it  reappear  ;  we  are  not  wearied, 
because  each  time  it  adds  somewhat  to  our  idea,  and  shows 
us  the  object  in  a  new  light." — Lowell. 

"The  '  Essay  on  Criticism'  is  like  a  metrical  multiplica- 
tion table.  It  required  very  little  reading  of  the  French  text- 
books to  find  the  maxims  which  Pope  has  here  strung  together. 
But  he  has  dressed  them  so  neatly  and  turned  them  out  with 
such  sparkle  and  point  that  these  truisms  have  acquired  a 
weight  not  their  own." — De  Qutncey. 

"  They  [the  artificial  poets]  could  not  mean  greatly,  but 
such  meaning  as  they  had  they  labored  to  express  in  the  most 
terse  and  pointed  form  which  our  language  is  capable  of.  It 
not  poets,  they  were  literary  artists.  They  showed  that  a 
couplet  can  do  the  work  of  a  page  and  a  single  line  produce 
effects  which,  in  the  infancy  of  writing,  would  require  sen- 
tences."— Mark  Pattison. 


174  POPE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  See  the  same  man,  in  vigour,  in  the  gout  ; 
Alone,  in  company  ;  in  place,  or  out ; 
Early  at  business,  and  at  hazard  late  ; 
Mad  at  a  fox-chase,  wise  at  a  debate  ; 
Drunk  at  a  borough,  civil  at  a  ball  ; 
Friendly  at  Hackney,  faithless  at  Whitehall." 

— Moral  Essays. 

"  But  where's  the  man  who  counsel  can  bestow, 
Still  pleased  to  teach,  and  yet  not  proud  to  know  ? 
Unbias'd,  or  by  favour  or  by  spite  ; 
Not  dully  prepossessed,  not  blindly  right ; 
Though  learn'd,  well-bred  ;  and  though  well-bred,  sincere  ; 
Modestly  bold,  and  humanly  severe  ; 
Who  to  a  friend  his  faults  can  freely  show, 
And  gladly  praise  the  merit  of  a  foe  ? 
Blest  with  a  taste  exact,  yet  unconfined  ; 
A  knowledge  both  of  books  and  human  kind." 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 

"  Of  manners  gentle,  of  affections  mild  ; 
In  wit  a  man,  simplicity,  a  child  ; 
With  native  humour  tempering  virtuous  rage, 
Form'd  to  delight  at  once  and  lash  the  age. 
Above  temptation,  in  a  low  estate, 
And  uncorrupted  even  among  the  great : 
A  safe  companion,  and  an  easy  friend, 
Unblamed  through  life,  lamented  in  thy  end." 

— Epitaph  on  Gay. 

3.  Melody. — "In  two  directions,  in  that  of  condensing 
and  pointing  his  meaning  and  in  that  of  drawing  the  utmost 
harmony  of  sound  out  of  the  couplet,  Pope  carried  versifica- 
tion far  beyond  the  point  at  which  it  was  when  he  took  it  up. 
Because,  after  Pope,  this  trick  of  versification  became  com- 
mon property,  and  '  every  warbler  had  his  tune  by  heart/  we 


POPE  175 

are  apt  to  overlook  the  merit  of  the  first  invention. 
We  have  [in  the  quotation  below]  twenty-four  lines  (eleven  in 
the  Greek)  of  finished  versification,  the  rapid,  facile,  and  me- 
lodious flow  of  which,  concentrating  all  the  felicities  of  Pope's 
higher  style,  has  never  been  surpassed  in  English  poetry." — 
Mark  Partisan. 

"  The  troops,  exulting,  sat  in  order  round, 
And  beaming  fires  illumined  all  the  ground. 
As  when  the  moon,  refulgent  lamp  of  night, 
O'er  heaven's  clear  azure  spreads  her  sacred  light, 
When  not  a  breath  disturbs  the  deep  serene, 
And  not  a  cloud  o'ercasts  the  solemn  scene ; 
Around  her  throne  the  vivid  planets  roll, 
And  stars  unnumbered  gild  the  glowing  pole, 
O'er  the  dark  trees  a  yellower  verdure  shed, 
And  tip  with  silver  every  mountain's  head." 

— Translation  of  the  Iliad. 

"  To  Pope  the  English  language  will  always  be  indebted. 
He,  more  than  any  other  before  or  since,  discovered  its  power 
of  melody,  enriched  it  with  poetical  elegances,  with  happy 
combinations. ' ' — Taine. 

"  Again,  your  verse  is  orderly — and  more — 
1  The  waves  behind  impel  the  waves  before;' 
Monotonously  musical  they  glide, 
Till  couplet  unto  couplet  hath  replied." 

— Andrew  Lang. 

"  He  gave  the  most  striking  examples  of  his  favorite  theory, 
that  '  sound  should  seem  an  echo  to  the  sense. '  He  carried 
out  the  improvement  in  diction  which  Dryden  commenced  ; 
and  while  Addison  was  producing  beautiful  specimens  of  re- 
formed prose,  Pope  gave  a  polish  and  point  to  verse  before 
unknown." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 


176  POPE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Now  under  hanging  mountains, 
Beside  the  falls  of  fountains, 
Or  where  Hebrus  wanders, 
Rolling  in  meanders, 
All  alone, 

Unheard,  unknown, 
He  makes  his  moan  ; 
And  calls  her  ghost, 
For  ever,  ever,  ever  lost ! 
Now  with  furies  surrounded, 
Despairing,  confounded, 
He  trembles,  he  glows, 
Amidst  Rhodope's  snows: 

See,  wild  as  the  winds,  o'er  the  desert  he  flies  ; 
Hark  !     Haemus  resounds  with  the  Bacchanals'  cries 
Ah  see,  he  dies  ! " 

—  Ode  on  St.  Cecilia! 's  Day. 

"  Hark  !  they  whisper  ;  angels  say, 
'  Sister  spirit,  come  away  ! ' 
What  is  this  absorbs  me  quite  ? 
Steals  my  senses,  shuts  my  sight, 
Drowns  my  spirits,  draws  my  breath? 
Tell  me,  my  soul,  can  this  be  death  ? 

The  world  recedes,  it  disappears  ! 
Heaven  opens  on  my  eyes  !  my  ears 

With  sounds  seraphic  ring  : 
Lend,  lend  your  wings  !  I  mount !  I  fly  \ 
O  Grave  !  where  is  thy  victory  ? 

O  Death  !  where  is  thy  sting  ?  " 

—  The  Dying  Christian  to  His  Soul. 

"  But  now  secure  the  painted  vessel  glides, 
The  sunbeams  trembling  on  the  floating  tides 
While  melting  music  steals  upon  the  sky, 
And  soften'd  sounds  along  the  waters  die  ; 


POPE  177 

Smooth  flow  the  waves,  the  zephyrs  gently  play, 
Belinda  smiled,  and  all  the  world  was  gay — 
All  but  the  sylph  ;  with  careful  thoughts  opprest, 
The  impending  woe  sat  heavy  on  his  breast. 
He  summons  straight  his  denizens  of  air  ; 
The  lucid  squadrons  round  the  sails  repair  : 
Soft  o'er  the  shrouds  aerial  whispers  breathe, 
That  seemed  but  zephyrs  to  the  train  beneath." 

—  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

4.  Artificiality. — "  Dryden  and  Pope  are  the  great  mas- 
ters of  the  artificial  style  of  poetry  in  our  language.  .  .  . 
If,  indeed,  by  a  great  poet  we  mean  one  who  gives  the  utmost 
grandeur  to  our  conceptions  of  nature,  or  the  utmost  force  to 
the  passions  of  the  heart,  Pope  was  not  in  this  sense  a  great 
poet ;  for  the  bent,  the  characteristic  power  of  his  mind,  lay 
the  clean  contrary  way  :  namely,  in  representing  things  as 
they  appear  to  the  indifferent  observer,  stripped  of  prejudice 
and  passion,  as  in  his  Critical  Essays ;  or  in  representing  them 
in  the  most  contemptible  and  insignificant  point  of  view,  as 
in  his  Satires  ;  or  in  clothing  the  little  with  mock  dignity,  as 
in  his  poems  of  Fancy ;  or  in  adorning  the  trivial  incidents 
and  familiar  relations  of  life  with  the  utmost  elegance  of  ex- 
pression. ...  He  was  not  distinguished  as  a  poet,  of 
lofty  enthusiasm,  of  strong  imagination,  with  a  passionate 
sense  of  the  beauties  of  nature,  or  a  deep  insight  into  the 
workings  of  the  heart ;  but  he  was  a  wit  and  a  critic,  a  man 
of  sense,  of  observation,  and  of  the  world,  with  a  keen  relish 
for  the  elegances  of  art,  ...  a  quick  tact  for  propriety 
of  thought  and  manners  as  established  by  the  forms  and  cus- 
toms of  society.  .  He  was,  in  a  word,  the  poet,  not 
of  nature,  but  of  art.  .  He  saw  nature  only  dressed 
by  art ;  he  judged  of  beauty  by  fashion  ;  he  sought  for  truth  in 
the  opinions  of  the  world  ;  he  judged  of  the  feelings  of  others 
by  his  own.  .  .  .  Pope's  muse  never  wandered  with  safety 
but  from  his  library  to  his  grotto  or  from  his  grotto  into  his  li- 
12 


178  POPE 

brary  back  again.  ...  He  could  describe  the  faultless, 
whole-length  mirror  that  reflected  his  own  person  better  than 
the  smooth  surface  of  the  lake  that  reflects  the  face  of  heaven, 
a  piece  of  cut  glass  or  a  pair  of  paste  buckles  with  more  brill- 
iance and  effect  than  a  thousand  dew-drops  glittering  in  the 
sun.  He  would  be  more  delighted  with  a  patent  lamp  than 
with  the  <  pale  reflex  of  Cynthia's  brow.'  .  .  .  That 
which  was  nearest  to  him  was  the  greatest :  the  fashion  of  the 
day  bore  sway  in  his  mind  over  the  immutable  laws  of  nature. 
.  .  .  His  mind  was  the  antithesis  of  strength  and  grandeur ; 
its  power  was  the  power  of  indifference.  He  had  none  of  the 
enthusiasm  of  poetry ;  he  was  in  poetry  what  the  skeptic  is  in 
religion.  .  .  .  For  rocks  and  seas  and  mountains  he  gives 
us  artificial  grass-plats,  gravel  walks,  and  tinkling  rills  :  for 
earth-quakes  and  tempests,  the  breaking  of  a  flower- pot  or  the 
fall  of  a  china  jar. "  —  William  Hazlitt. 

11 1  admire  Pope  in  the  very  highest  degree  ;  but  I  admire 
him  as  a  pyrotechnic  artist  for  producing  brilliant  and  evanes- 
cent effects  out  of  elements  that  have  hardly  a  moment's  life 
within  them.  There  is  a  flash  and  a  startling  explosion  ;  then 
there  is  a  dazzling  coruscation  ;  all  purple  and  gold  ;  the 
eye  aches  under  the  suddenness  of  a  display  that,  springing 
like  a  burning  arrow  out  of  darkness,  rushes  back  into  dark- 
ness with  arrowy  speed,  and  in  a  moment  all  is  over.  .  .  . 
But  Pope  was  all  jets  and  tongues  of  flame  ;  all  showers  of  scin- 
tillation and  sparkle.  .  .  .  To  Pope  we  owe  it  that  we 
can  now  claim  a  ...  pre-eminence  in  the  sportive  and 
aerial  graces  of  the  mock-heroic  and  satiric  muse." — De 
Quincey. 

"  As  truly  as  Shakespeare  is  the  poet  of  man  as  God  made 
him,  dealing  with  great  passions  and  innate  motives,  so  truly 
is  Pope  the  poet  of  society,  the  delineator  of  manners,  the  ex- 
poser  of  those  motives  which  may  be  called  acquired,  whose 
spring  is  in  institutions  and  habits  of  purely  worldly  origin. 
.  Pope's  style  is  the  apotheosis  of  clearness,  point, 


)PE  179 

technical  skill,  or  the  ease  that  comes  of  practice,  not  of  the 
fulness  of  original  power.  .  .  .  He  stands  for  exactness  of 
intellectual  expression,  for  perfect  propriety  of  phrase  (I  speak 
of  him  at  his  best),  and  is  a  striking  instance  how  much  suc- 
cess and  permanence  of  reputation  depend  on  conscientious 
finish  as  well  as  on  native  endowment.  .  .  .  But  the 
defect  of  this  kind  of  criticism  was  that  it  ignored  imagination 
altogether,  and  sent  Nature  about  her  business  as  an  imperti- 
nent baggage,  whose  household  loom  competed  unlawfully 
with  the  machine-made  fabrics,  so  exquisitely  uniform  in 
pattern,  of  the  royal  manufactories.  .  .  .  Even  poor  old 
Dennis  himself  had  arrived  at  a  kind  of  muddled  notion  that 
artifice  was  not  precisely  art,  that  there  were  depths  in  human 
nature  which  the  most  perfectly  manufactured  line  of  five  feet 
could  not  sound." — Lowell, 

"  He  has  no  romance,  no  spirituality,  no  mystery,  and  the 
highest  regions  of  poetry  he  never  so  much  as  dreams  of;  but 
in  the  lower  regions  there  is  perhaps  no  single  writer  who 
showers  fine  things  about  him  with  such  a  prodigality  of  wit, 
or  dazzles  us  so  much  with  the  mere  exercise  of  his  intelli- 
gen ce. "  — Edmund  Gosse. 

"Pope  has  no  dash,  no  naturalness  or  manliness;  he  has 
no  more  ideas  than  passions — at  least  such  ideas  as  a  man  feels 
it  necessary  to  write,  and  in  connection  with  which  we  lose 
thought  of  words.  Religious  controversy  and  party  quarrels  re- 
sound about  him  ;  he  studiously  avoids  them  ;  amidst  all  these 
shocks  his  chief  care  is  to  preserve  his  writing-desk. 
In  reality  he  did  not  write  because  he  thought,  but  thought 
in  order  to  write;  manuscript,  and  the  noise  it  makes  in  the 
world  when  printed,  was  his  idol ;  if  he  wrote  verses,  it  was 
merely  for  the  sake  of  doing  so.  ...  The  Last  scene  [of 
the  '  Dunciad  ']  ends  with  noise,  cymbals  and  trombones, 
crackers  and  fire- works.  As  for  me,  I  carry  away  from  this 
celebrated  entertainment  only  the  remembrance  of  a  hubbub. 
Unwittingly  I  have  counted  the  lights,  I  know  the  machinery, 


180  POPE 

I  have  touched  the  toilsome  stage -property  of  apparitions 
and  allegories.  I  bid  farewell  to  the  scene-painter,  the 
machinist,  the  manager  of  literary  effects,  and  go  elsewhere 
to  find  the  poet.  .  .  .  Pope's  most  perfect  poems  are 
those  made  up  of  precepts  and  arguments.  Artifice  in  these  is 
less  shocking  than  elsewhere.  ...  A  great  writer  is  a 
man  who,  having  passions,  knows  his  dictionary  and  his  gram- 
mar; Pope  thoroughly  knew  his  dictionary  and  his  grammar, 
but  stopped  there.  .  .  .  The  most  correct  and  formal  of 
men.  .  .  .  These  caricatures  seem  strange  to  us,  but  do 
not  amuse.  The  wit  is  no  wit:  all  is  calculated,  combined, 
artificially  prepared. ' '  —  Taine. 

"  Pope's  muse  had  left  the  free  forest  for  Will's  coffee- 
house, and  haunted  ladies'  boudoirs  instead  of  the  brakes  of 
the  enchanted  island.  Her  wings  were  clogged  with  '  gums 
and  pomatums,'  and  her  *  thin  essence'  had  shrunk  '  like  a 
rivel'd  flower.'  .  .  .  Nature  has,  for  him,  ceased  to  be 
inhabited  by  sylphs  and  fairies,  except  to  amuse  the  fancies  of 
fine  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  has  not  yet  received  a  new  in- 
terest from  the  fairy  tales  of  science.  .  .  .  Pope  always 
resembles  an  orator  whose  gestures  are  studied,  and  who 
thinks  while  he  is  speaking  of  the  fall  of  his  robes  and  the 
attitude  of  his  hand.  He  is  throughout  academical ;  and 
though  knowing  with  admirable  nicety  how  grief  should 
be  represented,  and  what  have  been  the  expedients  of  his 
best  predecessors,  he  misses  the  one  essential  touch  of  spon- 
taneous impulse.  .  .  .  The  fragments  cohere  by  exter- 
nal cement,  not  by  an  internal  unity  of  thought." — Leslie 
Stephen. 

"  Of  the  '  wild  benefit  of  nature'  Pope  had  small  notion. 

.  .  Of  that  indescribable  something,  that  '  greatness ' 
which  causes  Dryden  to  uplift  a  lofty  head  from  the  deep  pit 
of  his  corruption,  neither  Pope's  character  nor  his  style  bears 
any  trace.  ...  A  cleverer  fellow  than  Pope  never  com- 
menced author.  He  was,  in  his  own  mundane  way,  as  de- 


POPE  l8l 

termined  to  be  a  poet,  and  the  best  going,  as  John  Milton 
himself.  He  took  pains  to  be  splendid — he  polished  and 
pruned.  His  first  draft  never  reached  the  printer — though  he 
sometimes  said  it  did." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  There  are  no  pictures  of  nature  or  of  simple  emotion  in 
all  his  writings.  He  is  the  poet  of  town  life  and  of  high 
life  and  of  literary  life,  and  seems  so  much  afraid  of  incurring 
ridicule  by  the  display  of  feeling  or  unregulated  fancy  that  it 
is  not  difficult  to  believe  that  he  would  have  thought  such 
ridicule  well  directed." — Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  The  fact  is  that,  in  a  very  artificial  age  (and  such  was 
the  age  of  Pope),  an  artificial  poet  is  the  highest  poet  attain- 
able; his  very  artificiality  of  matter  and  style  is  his  authenti- 
cation as  poet.  .  .  .  The  only  condition,  then,  on  which 
we  can  have  real  poets  in  an  artificial  age  is  that  they  should 
be  in  a  measure  artificial ;  on  that  condition  we  can  have 
them,  and  in  Pope  England  had  one  truly  super -eminent." — 
W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  The  taste  of  Pope  was  evidently  artificial  to  the  last  de- 
gree. He  delighted  in  a  grotto  decked  out  with  looking- 
glasses  and  colored  stones  as  much  as  Wordsworth  in  a 
mountain  path,  or  Scott  in  a  border  antiquity.  The  '  Rape 
of  the  Lock '  is  considered  his  most  characteristic  production, 
and  abounds  with  brilliant  fancy  and  striking  invention.  But 
to  what  is  it  devoted?  The  celebration  of  a  trivial  incident 
in  fashionable  life.  Its  inspiration  is  not  of  the  grove,  but  of 
the  boudoir.  It  is  not  bright  with  the  radiance  of  truth,  but 
with  the  polish  of  art.  It  breathes  not  the  fragrance  of  wild 
flowers,  but  the  fumes  of  tea.  It  displays  not  the  simple 
features  of  nature,  but  the  paraphernalia  of  the  toilet."  — 
H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Pope's  '  Messiah  '  reads  to  us  like  a  sickly  paraphrase,  in 
which  all  the  majesty  of  the  original  is  dissipated.  '  Right- 
eousness '  becomes  '  dewy  nectar ;  '  '  sheep  '  are  '  the  fleecy 
care ; '  the  call  to  Jerusalem  to  '  arise  and  shine '  is  turned 


l82  POPE 

into  an  invocation  to  '  exalt  her  tow'ry  head.'     The  *  fir  tree 
and  box  tree'  of  Isaiah  are  '  the  spiry  fir  and  shapely  box.'  ' 
— Mark  Pattison. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"For  lo !  the  board  with  cups  and  spoons  is  crowned, 
The  berries  crackle,  and  the  mill  turns  round  ; 
On  shining  altars  of  Japan  they  raise 
The  silver  lamp  ;  the  fiery  spirits  blaze  : 
From  silver  spouts  the  grateful  liquors  glide, 
While  China's  earth  receives  the  smoking  tide." 

—  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

"  Swift  fly  the  years,  and  rise  the  expected  morn  ! 
Oh  spring  to  light,  auspicious  Babe,  be  born  ! 
See,  Nature  hastes  her  earliest  wreaths  to  bring, 
With  all  the  incense  of  the  breathing  spring  : 
See  lofty  Lebanon  his  head  advance, 
See  nodding  forests  on  the  mountains  dance  : 
See  spicy  clouds  from  lowly  Saron  rise, 
And  Carmel's  flowery  top  perfumes  the  skies  ! 
Hark !  a  glad  voice  the  lonely  desert  cheers  ; 
Prepare  the  way !  a  God,  a  God  appears  : 
A  God,  a  God!  the  vocal  hills  reply, 
The  rocks  proclaim  the  approaching  Deity. 
Lo,  earth  receives  him  from  the  bending  skies !  " 

— Messiah. 

"  Thou,  too,  great  father  of  the  British  floods  ! 
With  joyful  pride  survey'st  our  lofty  woods  ; 
Where  towering  oaks  their  growing  honours  rear, 
And  future  navies  on  thy  shores  appear, 
Not  Neptune's  self  from  all  her  streams  receives 
A  wealthier  tribute  than  to  thine  he  gives. 
No  seas  so  rich,  so  gay  no  banks  appear, 
No  lake  so  gentle  and  no  spring  so  clear. 
Nor  Po  so  swells  the  fabling  poet's  lays, 
While  led  along  the  skies  his  current  strays, 
As  thine,  which  visits  Windsor's  famed  abodes, 
To  grace  the  mansion  of  our  earthly  gods  : 


POPE  183 

Nor  all  his  stars  above  a  lustre  show 
Like  the  bright  beauties  on  thy  banks  below  ; 
Where  Jove,  subdued  by  mortal  passion  still, 
Might  change  Olympus  for  a  nobler  hill." 

—  Windsor  Forest. 

5.  Vivid   Portraiture — Individuality. — "  He  did  in 

some  inadequate  sense  hold  up  the  mirror  to  nature.  .  .  . 
It  was  a  mirror  in  a  drawing-room,  but  it  gave  back  a  faithful 
image  of  society,  powdered  and  rouged,  to  be  sure,  and  in- 
tent on  trifles,  yet  still  as  human  in  its  own  way  as  the  heroes 
of  Homer  in  theirs." — Lowell. 

"  There  is  a  kind  [ot  writing]  in  which  he  succeeds.  .  .  . 
His  descriptive  and  oratorical  talents  find  in  portraiture  mat- 
ter which  suits  them.  .  .  .  Several  of  his  portraits  are 
medals  worthy  of  finding  a  place  in  the  cabinets  of  the  curious 
and  of  remaining  in  the  archives  of  the  human  race;  when  he 
chisels  one  of  these  heads,  the  comprehensive  images,  the  un- 
looked-for connections  of  words,  the  sustained  and  multiplied 
contrasts,  the  perpetual  and  extraordinary  conciseness,  the 
incessant  and  increasing  impulse  of  all  the  strokes  of  eloquence 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  same  spot,  stamp  upon  the  memory 
an  impress  which  we  never  forget." — Taine. 

"Like  all  the  greatest  poets,  Pope  is  individual  and  local. 
He  can  paint  with  his  full  power  only  what  he  sees.  .  .  . 
He  can  pick  out  all  the  flaws,  all  the  stains,  combine  them 
effectively,  and  present  them  as  a  picture  of  the  man.  To 
his  portraits  none  can  deny  a  certain  likeness." — Mark  Patti 
son. 

"Each  of  these  descriptions  [of  Addison  and  others]  is, 
indeed,  a  masterpiece  in  its  way ;  the  language  is  inimitably 
clear  and  pointed." — Leslie  Stephen. 


1 84  POPE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Statesman,  yet  friend  to  truth  !  of  soul  sincere, 
In  action  faithful,  and  in  honour  clear  ! 
Who  broke  no  promise,  served"  no  private  end, 
Who  gained  no  title,  and  who  lost  no  friend  ; 
Ennobled  by  himself,  by  all  approved, 
Praised,  wept,  and  honour'd  by  the  muse  he  loved." 

—  On  James  Craggs,  Esq. 

11  Go  !  fair  example  of  untainted  youth, 
Of  modest  wisdom  and  pacific  truth  : 
Composed  in  sufferings  and  in  joy  spdate, 
Good  without  noise,  without  pretension  great, 
Just  of  thy  word,  in  every  thought  sincere, 
Who  knew  no  wish  but  what  the  world  might  hear. 
Of  softest  manners,  unaffected  mind, 
Lover  of  peace,  and  friend  of  humankind  : 
Go  live  !  for  Heaven's  eternal  year  is  thine, 
Go,  and  exalt  thy  mortal  to  divine."  — To  Robert  Digby. 

/  6.  Meanness  —  Coarseness  —  Malignity.  —  "  The 

nDunciad  '  is  a  personal  satire,  or  lampoon,  directed  against 
the  small  authors  of  the  day,  who  are  bespattered  with  much 
mud  and  little  wit,  without  any  pretense  of  disguise  and  under 
their  own  names  .  .  . — an  amalgam  of  dirt,  ribaldry,  and 
petty  spite.  .  .  .  And  against  whom  is  this  petty  irrita- 
tion felt  ?  Against  feeble  journalists,  brutal  pamphleteers, 
starving  rhymesters,  and  a  crew  of  hackney  authors,  bohemians 
of  ink  and  paper  below  literature.  To  sting  and  wound  these 
unfortunates  gave  Pope  pleasure  as  he  sate,  meditating  stabs, 
in  his  elegant  villa,  the  resort  of  the  rich  and  the  noble  !  By 
attacking  these,  he  lowers  himself  to  their  level.  The  first 
poet  of  the  age — of  the  century — chooses  to  hand  himself 
down  to  posterity  as  bandying  scurrilities  with  the  meanest 
scribblers,  hired  defamers,  the  banditti  of  the  printing-office, 
ready  at  the  shortest  notice  to  deliver  half  a  crown's  worth  of 


POPE  185 

slander.  .  .  .  His  more  elaborate  portraits  are  so  many 
virulent  and  abusive  lampoons.  In  his  savage  assaults  on 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montague  and  on  old  Lord  Hervey,  he 
passed  the  bounds  of  the  rules  of  decorum  recognized,  not  to 
say  in  refined  but  in  decent  society.  His  verses  on  Addison 
violate  only  truth  and  good  feeling.  But  it  is  not  only  in  his 
individual  portraits  that  he  is  carried  beyond  the  bounds  of 
civility,  his  whole  satire  is  pitched  in  a  key  which  good  taste 
is  compelled  to  disown.  It  is  trenchant  and  direct.  It  is 
not  merely  caustic,  it  is  venomous.  It  betrays  a  spiteful  pur- 
pose in  the  satirist.  .  .  .  Pope  was  conscious  of  a  talent 
for  caustic  effects,  conscious  that  he  could  do  better  than  any- 
one what  every  one  else  was  doing — sting  with  epigram. 

He  was  capable  of  the  malice  which  thirsts  for  leav- 
ing wounds.     All  those  bitter  couplets  were  not  impulse  or 
fashion  but  meditated  stabs  of  personal  vengeance. 
For  all  outside  his  own  circle  he  has  nothing  but  bitterness. 

He  fell  furiously  upon  the  trade  of  authorship, 
treated  poverty  as  a  vice,  and  descends  even  to  contrast  his 
own  '  poetic  dignity  and  ease  '  with  the  raggedness  and  din- 
nerlessness  of  the  sons  of  rhyme.  The  '  Dunciad  '  is  wholly 
inspired  by  this  animosity  against  needy  authors. 
Pope  too  often  allows  the  personal  grudge  to  be  seen  through 
the  surface  of  public  police  which  he  puts  on  his  work. 
But  the  thin  disguise  of  offended  virtue  is  too  often  a  cloak  for 
revenge.  His  most  pungent  verses  can  always  be  referred  back 
to  some  personal  cause  of  affront.  ,  .  .  He  knowingly 
threw  away  fame  to  indulge  his  piques." — Mark  Pattison. 

"In  his  lifetime  '  the  wasp  of  Twickenham'  could  sting 
through  a  sevenfold  covering  of  pride  or  stupidity.  .  .  . 
We  have  to  add  all  the  cases  in  which  Pope  attacked  his 
enemies  under  feigned  names,  and  then  disavowed  his  attacks. 

He  is  the  man  distinguished  beyond  all  other  writ- 
ers for  the  bitterness  of  his  resentment  against  all  small  critics; 
who  disfigures  his  best  poems  by  his  petty  vengeance  for  old 


1 86  POPE 

attacks.  .  .  .  The  'Dunciad,'  indeed,  is,  beyond  all 
question,  full  of  coarse  abuse.  The  second  book,  in  particu- 
lar, illustrates  that  strange  delight  in  the  physically  disgusting 
which  Johnson  notices  as  characteristic  of  Pope  and  his 
master,  Swift." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  However  great  his  merit  in  expression,  I  think  it  impossi- 
ble that  a  true  poet  could  have  written  such  a  satire  as  the 
'  Dunciad,'  which  is  even  nastier  than  it  is  witty.  It  is  filthy 
even  in  a  filthy  age,  and  Swift  himself  could  not  have  gone 
beyond  some  parts  of  it.  One's  mind  needs  to  be  sprinkled 
with  some  disinfecting  fluid  after  reading  it." — Lowell. 

"The  'Dunciad/  in  which  he  endeavored  to  sink  into 
contempt  all  the  writers  by  whom  he  had  been  attacked  and 
some  others  whom  he  thought  unable  to  defend  themselves 
.  .  .  The  incessant  and  unappeasable  malignity  of  Pope. 
...  He  expected  that  everything  should  give  way  to  his 
ease  or  humour ;  as  a  child,  whose  parents  will  not  hear  her 
cry,  has  an  unresisted  dominion  in  the  nursery.  ...  He 
was  fretful  and  easily  displeased,  and  allowed  himself  to  be 
capriciously  resentful.  .  .  .  Pope  and  Swift  had  an 
unnatural  delight  in  ideas  physically  impure,  such  as  every 
other  tongue  utters  with  unwillingness  and  of  which  every  ear 
shrinks  from  mention." — Samuel  Johnson. 

"Like  a  hornet,  who  is  said  to  leave  his  sting  in  the 
wound  and  then  languish  away,  Pope  felt  greatly  exhausted 
by  the  efforts  connected  with  the  '  Dunciad.'  .  .  .  Pope, 
besides  that  the  basis  of  his  ridicule  is  continually  too  narrow, 
local,  and  casual,  is  rank  to  utter  corruption  with  a  disease 
far  deeper  than  false  refinement  or  conventionalism." — De 
Quincey. 

"It  is  not  unfitting  that  so  quarrelsome  a  man  as  Pope 
should  have  been  the  occasion  of  so  much  quarrelsomeness  in 
others.  .  .  .  The  age  was  a  scandalous,  ill-living  age, 
and  Pope,  who  was  a  most  confirmed  gossip  and  tale-bearer, 
picked  up  all  that  was  going.  ...  If  the  historian  or 


POPE  187 

the  moralist  seeks  an  illustration  of  the  coarseness  and  brutal- 
ity of  their  style  [the  small  writers  of  Pope's  day],  he  finds  it 
only  too  easily,  not  in  the  works  of  the  dead  dunces,  but  in 
the  pages  of  their  persecutor.  ...  Pope  had  none  of 
the  grave  purpose  which  makes  us,  at  all  events,  partially 
sympathize  with  Ben  Jonson  in  his  quarrels  with  the  poet- 
asters of  his  day.  It  is  a  mere  toss-up  whose  name  you  may 
find  in  the  '  Dunciad  ' — a  miserable  scribbler's  or  a  resplen- 
dent scholar's ;  a  tasteless  critic's  or  an  immortal  wit's.  A 
satirist  who  places  Richard  Bentley  and  Daniel  Defoe 
amongst  the  dunces  must  be  content  to  abate  his  pretensions 
to  be  regarded  as  a  social  purge.  .  .  .  Pope  greatly 
enjoyed  the  fear  he  excited.  .  .  .  Many  men  must 
have  been  glad  when  they  read  in  their  scanty  journals  that 
Mr.  Pope  lay  dead  in  his  villa  at  Twickenham.  They 
breathed  the  easier  for  the  news.  Personal  satire  may  be  a 
legitimate  but  it  is  an  ugly  weapon.  .  .  .  His  '  Eloisa  ' 
is  marred  by  a  most  unfeeling  coarseness."  —  Augustine 
BirrelL 

"  He  could  breathe  only  in  an  atmosphere  of  intrigue,  and 
the  physical  excitement  of  anger  was  the  keenest  pleasure  his 
nerves  could  enjoy.  .  .  .  Since  the  publication  of  the 
Caryll  correspondence  Pope  stands  revealed,  beyond  any 
hope  of  justification,  as  an  unscrupulous  and  intriguing  trick' 
ster, " — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  He  was  as  crafty  and  malignant  as  a  nervous  abortion, 
which  he  was.  When  he  wanted  anything  he  dared  no»  ask 
for  it  plainly ;  with  hints  and  contrivances  of  speech  he 
induced  people  to  mention  it,  to  bring  it  forward,  after  which 
he  would  make  use  of  it.  .  .  He  had  an  ugly  liking  for 

artifice,  and  played  a  disloyal  trick  on  Lord  Bolingbroke,  his 
greatest  friend.  .  .  He  had  all  the  appetite  and  whims 

of  an  old  child,  an  old  invalid,  an  old  author,  an  old  bache- 
lor. .  .  .  These  villainies,  this  foul  linen,  the  greasy 
coat  six  years  old,  the  musty  pudding,  and  the  rest,  are  to  be 


i88  POPE 

found  in  Pope  as  in  Hogarth,  with  English  coarseness  and 
precision.  This  is  their  error  ;  they  are  realists,  even  under 
the  classical  wig ;  they  do  not  disguise  what  is  ugly  and  mean  ; 
they  describe  that  ugliness  and  meanness  with  their  exact 
outlines  and  distinguishing  marks.  .  .  .  This  is  the 
reason  why  their  satires  are  so  harsh.  .  .  .  Seldom  has 
so  much  talent  been  expended  to  produce  so  much  ennui." — 
Taine. 

"  The  Wicked  Wasp  of  Twickenham."— Lady  Mary  Wort- 
ley  Montagu. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Though  Artemisia  [Queen  Caroline]  talks  by  fits 
Of  councils,  classics,  fathers,  wits, 
Reads  Malebranche,  Boyle,  and  Locke  : 

Yet  in  some  things  methinks  she  fails — 
'Twere  well  if  she  would  pare  her  nails 

And  wear  a  cleaner  smock. 

Haughty  and  huge  as  High-Dutch  bride, 

Such  nastiness  and  so  much  pride 

Are  oddly  joined  by  fate  : 

On  her  large  squab  you  find  her  spread, 

Like  a  fat  corpse  upon  a  bed, 

That  lies  and  stinks  in  state." — Artemisia. 

"  Yet  let  me  flap  this  bug  with  gilded  wings  [Lord  HerveyJ, 
This  painted  child  of  dirt,  that  stinks  and  stings  ; 
Whose  buzz  the  witty  and  the  fair  annoys, 
Yet  wit  ne'er  tastes,  and  beauty  ne'er  enjoys  : 
So  well-bred  spaniels  civilly  delight 
In  mumbling  of  the  game  they  dare  not  bite. 
Eternal  smiles  his  emptiness  betray, 
As  shallow  streams  run  dimpling  all  the  way. 
Whether  in  florid  impotence  he  speaks, 
And  as  the  prompter  breathes,  the  puppet  squeaks, 
Or  at  the  ear  of  Eve,  familiar  toad, 
Half  froth,  half  venom,  spits  himself  abroad. 
In  puns,  or  politics,  or  tales,  or  lies, 


POPE  189 

Or  spite,  or  smut,  or  rhymes,  or  blasphemies, 
His  wit  all  see-saw,  between  that  and  this  ; 
Now  high,  now  low,  now  master  up,  now  miss, 
And  he  himself  one  vile  antithesis." 

— Prologue  to  the  Satires. 

"  Avert  it,  Heaven!  that  thou,  my  Gibber,  e'er, 
Shouldst  wag  a  serpent-tail  in  Smithfield  fair  ! 
Like  the  vile  straw  that's  blown  about  the  streets, 
The  needy  poet  sticks  to  all  he  meets, 
Coach'd,  carted,  trod  upon  ;  now  loose,  now  fast, 
And  carried  off  in  some  dog's  tail  at  last. 
Happier  thy  fortunes  !  like  a  rolling  stone, 
Thy  giddy  dulness  still  shall  lumber  on." 

—  The  Dunciad. 


Vanity — Insincerity. — "  After  all,  his  great  cause 
Tor  writing  was  literary  vanity  :  he  wished  to  be  admired,  and 
nothing  more ;  his  life  was  that  of  a  coquette  studying  herself 
in  a  glass,  painting  her  face,  smirking,  receiving  compliments 
from  anyone,  yet  declaring  that  compliments  weary  her,  that 
paint  makes  her  dirty,  and  that  she  has  a  horror  of  affecta- 
tion  He  was  never  frank,  always  acting  a  part ;  he 

aped  the  blase  man,  the  impartial  great  artist ;  a  contemner 
of  the  great,  of  kings,  of  poetry  itself.  .  .  .  When  we 
read  his  correspondence  we  find  that  there  are  not  more  than 
ten  genuine  letters.  ...  It  seems  that  this  kind  of 
talent  is  made  for  light  verses.  .  .  .  To  make  pretty 
speeches,  to  prattle  with  the  ladies,  to  speak  elegantly  of  their 
chocolate  or  their  fan,  to  jeer  at  fools,  to  criticise  the  last 
tragedy,  to  be  good  at  insipid  compliments  or  epigrams — this, 
it  seems,  is  the  natural  employment  of  a  mind  such  as  this, 
but  slightly  impassioned,  very  vain,  a  perfect  master  of  style, 
as  careful  of  his  verses  as  a  dandy  of  his  coat." — Taine. 

"  Pope  was  through  his  life  ambitious  of  splendid  acquaint- 
ance. ...  In  his  character  may  be  discovered  an  appe- 
tite to  talk  too  frequently  of  his  own  virtues.  ...  It 


190  POPE 

may  be  discovered  that  when  he  thinks  himself  concealed  he 
indulges  the  common  vanity  of  common  men,  and  triumphs 
in  those  distinctions  which  he  had  affected  to  despise. 
Pope  had  been  flattered  until  he  thought  himself  one  of  the 
moving  powers  in  the  system  of  life.  When  he  talked  of  lay- 
ing down  his  pen,  those  who  sat  round  him  entreated  and  im- 
plored ;  and  self-love  did  not  suffer  him  to  suspect  that  they 
went  away  and  laughed.  .  .  .  Pope  may  be  said  to  write 
always  with  his  reputation  in  his  head.  .  .  .  Next  to  the 
pleasure  of  contemplating  his  possessions  seems  to  be  that  of 
enumerating  the  men  of  high  rank  with  whom  he  was  acquaint- 
ed, and  whose  notice  he  loudly  proclaims  not  to  have  obtained 
by  any  practices  of  meanness  or  servility;  a  boast  which  was 
never  denied  to  be  true.  .  .  .  It  is  evident  that  his  own 
importance  swells  often  in  his  mind.  .  .  .  One  of  his 
favorite  topics  is  contempt  of  his  own  poetry.  For  this,  if  it 
had  been  real,  he  would  deserve  no  commendation  :  and  in 
this  he  was  certainly  not  sincere,  for  his  high  value  of  himself 
was  sufficiently  observed ;  and  of  what  could  he  be  proud  but 
of  his  poetry?  .  .  .  He  pretends  insensibility  to  censure 
and  criticism,  though  it  was  observed  by  all  who  knew  him 
that  every  pamphlet  disturbed  his  quiet,  and  that  his  extreme 
irritability  laid  him  open  to  perpetual  vexation  ;  but  he  wished 
to  despise  his  critics,  and  therefore  hoped  that  he  did  despise 
them.  .  .  .  Pope  was  sufficiently  a  fool  to  fame,  and  his 
fault  was  that  he  pretended  to  neglect  it.  .  .  .  His  scorn 
of  the  great  is  too  often  repeated  to  be  real ;  as  no  man  thinks 
much  of  that  which  he  despises  ;  and  as  falsehood  is  always  in 
danger  of  inconsistency,  he  makes  it  his  boast  at  another  time 
that  he  lives  among  them.  .  .  .  When  Pope  murmurs  at 
the  world,  when  he  professes  contempt  of  fame,  when  he  speaks 
of  riches  and  poverty,  of  success  and  disappointment,  with 
negligent  indifference,  he  certainly  does  not  express  his  habit- 
ual and  settled  sentiments,  but  either  wilfully  disguises  his  own 
character,  or,  what  is  more  likely,  invests  himself  with  tempo- 


POPE  19! 

rary  qualities,  and  sallies  out  in  the  colors  of  the  present  mo- 
ment. ' ' — Samuel  Johnson. 

"  Recent  investigations  have  strengthened  those  suspicions 
of  his  honesty  which  were  common  even  among  his  contempo- 
raries. .  .  .  Speaking  bluntly,  indeed,  ...  we  ad- 
mit that  Pope  was,  in  a  small  way,  one  of  the  most  consummate 
liars  that  ever  lived.  .  .  .  Pope's  delight  in  artifice  was 
something  unparalleled.  .  .  .  Our  pleasure  in  reading 
him  is  much  counterbalanced  by  the  suspicion  that  those 
pointed  aphorisms  which  he  turns  out  in  so  admirably  polished 
a  form  may  come  only  from  the  lips.  .  .  .  Thus  we  are 
always  pursued,  in  reading  Pope,  by  disagreeable  misgivings. 
We  don't  know  what  comes  from  the  heart  and  what  from  the 
lips :  when  the  real  man  is  speaking,  and  when  we  are  listen- 
ing only  to  the  old  commonplaces  skilfully  vamped.  .  .  . 
One  can  hardly  help  smiling  at  his  praises  of  his  own  hospi- 
tality. .  .  .  How  far  he  succeeded  in  imposing  upon 
himself  is,  indeed,  a  very  curious  question,  which  can  never 
be  fully  answered.  There  is  the  strangest  mixture  of  honesty 
and  hypocrisy.  .  .  .  He  would  instinctively  snatch  at  a 
lie  even  when  a  moment's  reflection  would  have  shown  that 
the  plain  truth  would  be  more  convenient,  and  therefore  he 
had  to  accumulate  lie  upon  lie,  each  intended  to  patch  up 
some  previous  blunder." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Pope  practised  on  this,  as  on  other  occasions,  a  little 
finessing  ;  which  is  the  chief  foible  of  his  character. 
What  quality  of  thinking  must  that  be  [speaking  of  Pope's] 
which  allies  itself  so  naturally  with  distortions  of  fact  or  of 
philosophic  truth  ?  .  .  .  Pope,  having  no  such  internal 
principle  of  wrath  boiling  in  his  breast,  .  .  .  was  una- 
voidably a  hypocrite  of  the  first  magnitude  when  he  affected 
himself  .  .  .  to  be  in  a  dreadful  passion  with  offenders 
in  a  body.  It  provokes  fits  of  laughter,  in  a  man  who  knows 
Pope's  real  nature,  to  watch  him  in  the  process  of  braving  the 
storm  that  spontaneously  will  not  come,  whistling  like  a  mari- 


192  POPE 

ner  for  a  wind  to  fill  his  satiric  sails,  and  pumping  up  into  his 
face  hideous  grimaces  in  order  to  appear  convulsed  with  his- 
trionic rage.  Pope  should  have  been  counseled  never  to  write 
satire  except  on  those  evenings  when  he  was  suffering  horribly 
from  indigestion.  By  this  means  the  indignation  would  have 
been  ready-made.  The  rancor  against  all  mankind  would 
have  been  sincere,  and  there  would  have  needed  to  be  no  extra 
expense  in  getting  up  steam.  As  it  is,  the  short  puffs  of  anger, 
the  uneasy  snorts  of  fury,  in  Pope's  satires  give  one  painfully 
the  idea  of  a  locomotive  engine  with  unsound  lungs. 
Sudden  collapses  of  the  manufactured  wrath,  sudden  oblivion 
of  the  criminal,  announce  that  Pope's  passion  is  always  coun- 
terfeit. .  .  .  Truth,  even  of  the  most  appreciable  order, 
truth  of  history,  goes  to  wreck  continually  under  the  perversi- 
ties Pope's  satire  applied  to  celebrated  men ;  and  as  to  the 
higher  truth  of  philosophy,  it  was  still  less  likely  to  survive 
amongst  the  struggles  for  striking  effects  and  startling  con- 
trasts. .  .  .  The  key  to  his  failure  throughout  this  whole 
satire  section  [satires  on  woman]  ...  is  simply  that  not 
one  word  is  spoken  in  sincerity  of  heart  or  with  any  vestige 
of  self-belief.  .  .  .  The  malignity  [against  women]  was 
not  real — as  indeed  nothing  was  real — but  a  condiment  for 
hiding  insipidity.  ...  Pope,  in  too  many  instances,  for 
the  sake  of  some  momentary  and  farcical  effect,  deliberately 
assumes  the  license  of  a  liar.  He  adopts  the  language  of  moral 
indignation  where  we  know  that  it  could  not  possibly  have 
existed,  seeing  that  the  story  to  which  this  pretended  indig- 
nation is  attached  was,  to  Pope's  knowledge,  a  pure  fabrica- 
tion. .  .  .  That  Pope  killed  himself  by  potted  lampreys 
.  .  .  I  greatly  doubt ;  but  if  anything  inclines  me  to  be- 
lieve it,  chiefly  it  is  the  fury  of  his  invectives  against  epicures 
and  gluttons.  What  most  of  all  he  attacked  as  a  moralist  was 
the  particular  vice  which  most  of  all  besieged  him. 
He  writes  with  a  showy  air  of  disparaging  riches,  of  doing 
homage  to  private  worth,  of  honoring  patriotism,  and  so  on 


POPE  193 

through  all  the  commonplaces  of  creditable  morality.  But, 
in  the  midst  of  this  surface  display,  and  in  defiance  of  his 
ostentatious  pretensions,  Pope  is  not  in  any  deep  or  sincere 
sense  a  moral  thinker ;  and  in  his  own  heart  there  was  a  mis- 
giving, not  to  be  silenced,  that  he  was  not.  .  .  .  Here, 
however  [in  his  satires  and  moral  epistles],  most  eminently  it 
is  that  the  falseness  and  hypocrisy  which  besieged  his  literary 
career  have  made  themselves  manifest.  .  .  .  Pope,  in  the 
midst  of  actual  fidelity  to  his  church,  was  at  heart  a  traitor — • 
in  the  very  oath  of  his  allegiance  to  his  spiritual  mistress  he 
had  a  lie  upon  his  lips,  scoffed  at  her  whilst  kneeling  in  hom- 
age to  her  pretensions,  and  secretly  foreswore  her  doctrines 
whilst  suffering  insults  in  her  service.  .  .  .  But  upon  far 
more  subjects  than  this  Pope  was  habitually  false  in  the  qual- 
ity of  his  thoughts,  always  insincere,  never  by  any  accident 
in  earnest,  and  consequently  many  times  caught  in  ruinous 
self-contradiction.  .  .  .  But  if  the  reader  is  shocked  with 
Pope's  false  reading  of  phenomena  where  not  the  circum- 
stances so  much  as  the  construction  may  be  challenged,  what 
must  he  think  of  those  cases  in  which  downright  facts  and  in- 
cidents the  most  notorious  have  been  outrageously  falsified 
only  in  obedience  to  a  vulgar  craving  for  effect  in  the  dramatic 
situations,  or  by  way  of  pointing  a  moral  for  the  stimulation 
of  torpid  sensibilities  ?  .  .  .  [In  describing  the  death  of 
the  Duke  of  Buckingham.]  But  Pope  was  at  his  wit's  end  for 
a  striking  falsehood.  He  needed  for  a  momentary  effect  some 
tale  of  a  great  lord,  once  fabulously  rich,  who  had  not  left 
himself  the  price  of  a  halter  or  of  a  pauper's  bed.  And  thus, 
for  the  sake  of  extorting  a  stare  of  wonderment  from  a  mob  of 
gaping  readers  he  did  not  scruple  to  give  birth  and  currency 
to  the  grossest  of  legendary  fables.  .  .  .  Such  shame 
[from  personal  falsehoods]  would  settle  upon  every  page  of 
Pope's  satires  and  moral  epistles,  oftentimes  upon  every  coup- 
let, if  any  censor,  armed  with  an  adequate  knowledge  of  the 
facts,  were  to  prosecute  the  inquest.  And  the  general  impres- 
13 


194  POPE 

sion  from  such  an  inquest  would  be  that  Pope  never  delineated 
a  character  nor  uttered  a  sentiment  nor  breathed  an  aspiration 
which  he  would  not  willingly  have  recast,  have  retracted,  have 
abjured  or  trampled  under  foot  with  the  curses  assigned  to 
heresy,  if  by  such  an  act  he  could  have  added  a  hue  of  brill- 
iancy to  his  coloring  or  a  new  depth  to  his  shadows.  There 
is  nothing  he  would  not  have  sacrificed,  not  the  most  solemn 
of  his  opinions  nor  the  most  pathetic  memorial  from  his  per- 
sonal experiences,  in  return  for  a  sufficient  consideration — 
which  consideration  meant  always  with  him  poetic  effect. 
Simply  and  constitutionally,  he  was  incapable  of  a 
sincere  thought  or  a  sincere  emotion.  .  .  .  And  he  was 
evermore  false,  not  as  loving  or  preferring  falsehood,  but  as 
one  who  could  not  in  his  heart  perceive  much  real  difference 
between  what  people  affected  to  call  falsehood  and  what  they 
affected  to  call  truth.  ...  To  look  at  a  pale,  dejected  fel- 
low-creature creeping  along  the  highway  and  to  have  reason 
for  thinking  that  he  has  not  tasted  food  since  yesterday 
.  .  .  in  Pope,  left  to  his  spontaneous  nature,  such  a  sight 
and  such  a  thought  would  have  moved  only  fits  of  laughter. 
.  .  .  Still,  he  was  aware  that  some  caution  was  requisite  in 
giving  public  expression  to  such  feelings.  Accordingly,  when 
he  came  forward  in  gala  dress  as  a  philosopher,  he  assumed  the 
serene  air  of  one  upon  whom  all  such  idle  distinctions  as  rich 
and  poor  were  literally  thrown  away.  .  .  .  To  a  just  ap- 
preciation of  Pope's  falseness,  levity,  and  self-contradiction  it 
is  almost  essential  that  a  reader  should  have  studied  him  with 
the  purpose  of  becoming  his  editor." — De  Quincey. 

"  Pope  seems  to  refine  them  [his  satirical  portraits]  in  his 
own  mind  and  to  make  them  out  just  what  he  pleases,  till 
they  are  not  real  characters  but  the  mere  drivelling  effusions 
of  his  spleen  and  malice.  Pope  describes  the  thing  and  then 
goes  on  describing  his  own  description  till  he  loses  himself  in 
verbal  repetitions." — William  Hazlitt. 


POPE 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Well,  if  it  be  my  time  to  quit  the  stage, 
Adieu  to  all  the  follies  of  the  age  ! 
I  die  in  charity  with  fool  and  knave, 
Secure  of  peace  at  least  beyond  the  grave. 
I've  had  my  purgatory  here  betimes, 
And  paid  for  all  my  satires,  all  my  rhymes. 

With  foolish  pride  my  heart  was  never  fired, 

Nor  the  vain  itch  to  admire  or  be  admired  ; 

I  hoped  for  no  commission  from  his  grace  ; 

I  bought  no  benefice,  I  begged  no  place." — Satires. 

"  Friend  to  my  life  !  (which  did  not  you  prolong, 
The  world  had  wanted  many  an  idle  song). 
What  drop  or  nostrum  can  this  plague  remove  ? 
Or  which  must  end  me,  a  fool's  wrath  or  love  ? 
A  dire  dilemma!  either  way  I'm  sped, 
If  foes,  they  write — if  friends,  they  read  me  dead. 
Seized  and  tied  down  to  judge,  how  wretched  I ! 
Who  can't  be  silent,  and  who  will  not  lie." 

— Prologue  to  the  Satires. 

"  From  me,  what  Virgil,  Pliny  may  deny, 
Manilius  or  Solimus  shall  supply  : 
For  Attic  phrase  in  Plato  let  them  seek, 
I  poach  in  Suidas  for  unlicensed  Greek. 
In  ancient  sense  if  any  needs  will  deal, 
Be  sure  I  give  them  fragments,  not  a  meal ; 
What  Gellius  or  Stobaeus  hash'd  before, 
Or  chewed  my  blind  old  Scholiasts  o'er  and  o'er 
The  critic  eye,  that  microscope  of  wit, 
Sees  hairs  and  pores,  examines  bit  by  bit." 

—  The  Dunciad. 

"  Heroes  and  kings  !  your  distance  keep  : 
In  peace  let  one  poor  poet  sleep, 
Who  never  flattered  folks  like  you  : 
Let  Horace  blush,  and  Virgil  too." 

— For  One  Who  Would  Not  be  Buried 
tn  Westminster  Abbey. 


196  POPE 

8.  Elegance— Brilliance—Gracefulness.— -"  Pope  is 
the  incarnation  of  the  literary  spirit.  He  is  the  most  com- 
plete representative  in  our  language  of  the  intellectual  in- 
stincts which  find  their  natural  expression  in  pure  literature. 
He  was  an  artist  of  unparalleled  excellence  in  his 
own  department." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Within  his  narrow  circle  how  much,  and  that  how  ex- 
quisite, was  contained !  What  discrimination,  what  wit, 
what  delicacy,  what  fancy,  what  elegance  of  thought !  .  .  . 
The  '  Rape  of  the  Lock '  is  the  most  exquisite  specimen  of 
filigree  work  ever  invented." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  What  grace,  what  taste,  what  promptitude  in  feeling, 
how  much  justness  and  what  perfection  did  he  show  in  ex- 
pressing himself !  .  .  .  We  see  .  .  .  what  care  and 
what  elegance  he  introduced  into  his  varied  epistolary  inter- 
course."— St.  Beuve. 

"  The  '  Rape  of  the  Lock '  stands  forth  in  the  classes  of  liter- 
ature as  the  most  exquisite  example  of  ludicrous  poetry.  With 
elegance  of  description  and  justness  of  precept,  he  had 
now  exhibited  boundless  fertility  of  invention." — Samuel 
Johnson. 

"  Pope  is  a  representative  of  fine  literature  in  general. 
.  .  .  In  the  '  Rape  of  the  Lock  '  there  is  a  game  of  cards 
played  and  played  with  a  brilliancy  of  effect  and  felicity  of 
selection,  applied  to  the  circumstances,  which  make  it  a  sort 
of  gem  within  a  gem.  .  .  .  The  true  pretensions  of  Pope 
are  sustained  as  the  most  brilliant  writer  of  his  own  class  in 
European  literature." — De  Quincey. 

"  In  Pope  we  have  the  constant  effort  to  condense,  to  con- 
centrate meaning.  The  thought  has  been  turned  over  and 
over,  till  it  is  brought  out  finally  with  a  point  and  finish 
which  themselves  elicit  admiration.  Sometimes,  but  rarely, 
does  the  severity  of  the  writer's  taste  allow  him  to  overpoint 
what  he  wishes  to  say  and  to  let  the  epigram  run  away  with 
him." — Mark  Pattison. 


POPE  IQ7 

"  When  the  vast  number  of  his  couplets  are  considered, 
their  fastidious  correctness  is  truly  astonishing." — H.  T. 
Tuckerman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Know  then  thyself,  presume  not  God  to  scan, 
The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  Man. 
Placed  on  this  isthmus  of  a  middle  state, 
A  being  darkly  wise  and  rudely  great  ; 
With  too  much  knowledge  for  the  sceptic  side, 
With  too  much  weakness  for  the  stoic's  pride, 
He  hangs  between,  in  doubt  to  act  or  rest ; 
In  doubt  to  deem  himself  a  god  or  beast ; 
In  doubt  his  mind  or  body  to  prefer  ; 
Born  but  to  die  and  reasoning  but  to  err." 

— Essay  on  Man. 

"  'Tis  hard  to  say,  if  greater  want  of  skill 
Appear  in  writing  or  in  judging  ill ; 
But,  of  the  two,  less  dangerous  is  the  offence 
To  tire  our  patience  than  mislead  our  sense. 
Some  few  in  that,  but  numbers  err  in  this, 
Ten  censure  wrong,  for  one  who  writes  amiss  ; 
A  fool  might  once  himself  alone  expose, 
Now  one  in  verse  makes  many  more  in  prose." 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 

"'Tis  from  high  life  high  characters  are  drawn  ; 
A  saint  in  crape  is  twice  a  saint  in  lawn  ; 
A  judge  is  just,  a  chancellor  juster  still ; 
A  gownman  learned  ;  a  bishop,  what  you  will  ; 
Wise,  if  a  minister  ;  but,  if  a  king, 
More  wise,  more  learn'd,  more  just,  more  ev'rything." 

— Moral  Essays. 

Q.  Delicate  Skill  in  Criticism. — "  If  he  had  an  ex- 
cessive hatred  of  stupid  authors,  he  admired  the  good  and 
the  great  ones  all  the  more.  .  .  .  No  example  proves  to 
us  better  than  his  own  how  much  the  faculty  of  a  sensitive, 


198  POPE 

delicate  critic  is  an  active  faculty.  He  who  has  nothing  to 
express  neither  feels  nor  perceives  in  such  a  manner. 
When  one  is  a  critic  to  this  extent,  it  is  because  one  is  a 
poet.  .  .  .  Pope  has  defined  and  chalked  out  the  fine 
part  of  the  true  critic  in  many  passages  full  of  nobleness  and 
fire.  ...  No  one,  perhaps,  has  been  conscious  of  lit- 
erary stupidity  and  suffered  from  it  in  as  high  a  degree  as 
Pope."—  £/.  Beuve. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Poets,  like  painters,  thus,  unskilFd  to  trace, 

The  naked  nature  and  the  living  grace, 

With  gold  and  jewels  cover  every  part, 

And  hide  with  ornaments  their  want  of  art. 
-^True  wit  is  nature  to  advantage  dress'd  ; 

What  oft  was  thought  but  ne'er  so  well  expressed  ; 

Something  whose  truth,  convinced  at  sight  we  find, 

That  gives  us  back  the  image  of  our  mind. 

As  shades  more  sweetly  recommend  the  light, 

So  modest  plainness  sets  off  sprightly  wit. 

For  works  may  have  more  wit  than  does  'em  good, 

As  bodies  perish  through  excess  of  blood." 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 

"  In  all  debates  where  critics  bear  a  part, 
Not  one  but  nods,  and  talks  of  Jonson's  art, 
Of  Shakespeare's  nature,  and  of  Cowley's  wit ; 
How  Beaumont's  judgment  checked  what  Fletcher  writ ; 
How  Shadwell  hasty,  Wycherley  was  slow  ; 
But,  for  the  passions,  Southern  sure  and  Rowe. 
These,  only  these,  support  the  crowded  stage, 
From  eldest  Heywood  down  to  Gibber's  age." 

— Imitations  of  Horace. 

"  But  most  by  numbers  judge  a  poet's  song, 

And  smooth  or  rough,  with  them,  is  right  or  wrong ; 
In  the  bright  Muse,  though  thousand  charms  conspire, 
Her  voice  is  all  these  tuneful  fools  admire  ; 


POPE  199 

Who  haunt  Parnassus  but  to  please  their  ear, 
Not  mend  their  minds  ;  as  some  to  church  repair, 
Not  for  the  doctrine  but  the  music  there. 
These  equal  syllables  alone  require, 
Though  oft  the  ear  the  open  vowels  tire  ; 
While  expletives  their  feeble  aid  do  join  ; 
And  ten  low  words  oft  creep  in  one  dull  line  ; 
While  they  ring  round  the  same  unvaried  chimes 
With  sure  returns  of  still  expected  rhymes  : 
Where'er  you  find  '  the  cooling  western  breeze,' 
In  the  next  line,  it '  whispers  through  the  trees  : ' 
If  crystal  streams  '  with  pleasing  murmurs  creep,' 
The  reader's  threaten'd  (not  in  vain)  with  '  sleep ; ' 
Then,  at  the  last  and  only  couplet  fraught 
With  some  unmeaning  thing  they  call  a  thought, 
A  needless  Alexandrine  ends  the  song." 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 

10.    Religious  Faith— Conventional   Morality. — 

"Pope,  wheresoever  his  heart  speaks  loudly,  shows  how  deep 
had  been  his  early  impressions  from  Christianity.  ...  It 
is  remarkable,  also,  that  Pope  betrays,  in  all  places  where  he 
has  occasion  to  argue  about  Christianity,  how  much  grander 
and  more  faithful  to  that  great  theme  were  the  subconscious 
perceptions  of  his  heart  than  the  explicit  commentaries  of  his 
understanding.  He,  like  so  many  others,. was  unable  to  read 
or  interpret  the  testimonies  of  his  own  heart — an  unfathomea 
deep,  over  which  diviner  agencies  brood  than  are  legible  to 
the  intellect  The  cipher  written  on  his  heaven-visited  heart 
was  deeper  than  his  understanding  could  interpret." — DC 
Qutncey. 

1  In  Pope's  writings  ...  he  [the  reader]  will  find 
the  very  excellences  after  which  our  poets  strive  in  vain  .  .  . 
and  a  morality  infinitely  more  merciful,  as  well  as  more  right- 
eous, than  the  one  now  in  vogue  among  the  poetasters,  by 
honest  faith  in  God.  .  .  He  went  through  doubt, 

contradiction,  confusion,  to  which  yours  are  simple  and  light, 


200  POPE 

and  conquered.  ...  In  all  times  and  places,  as  far  as 
we  can  judge,  the  man  was  heart-whole,  more  and  not  less 
righteous  than  his  fellows.  With  his  whole  soul  he  hates  what 
is  evil,  as  far  as  he  can  recognize  it.  With  his  whole  soul  he 
loves  what  is  good,  as  far  as  he  can  recognize  that.  With  his 
whole  soul  believes  that  there  is  a  righteous  and  good  God, 
whose  order  no  human  folly  or  crime  can  destroy ;  and  he 
will  say  so ;  and  does  say  it,  clearly,  simply,  valiantly,  rev- 
erently, in  his  '  Essay  on  Man. '  .  .  .  There  were  in  that 
diseased,  sensitive  cripple  no  vain  repinings,  no  moon-struck 
howls,  no  impious  cries  against  God  :  '  Why  hast  thou  made 
me  thus  ? '  To  him,  God  is  a  righteous  God,  a  God  of  or- 
der." — Charles  Kings  ley. 

"  Pope  was     ...     in  his  way,  as  fair  an  embodiment 
as  we  could  expect  of  that  '  plain  living  and  high  thinking ' 
of  which  Wordsworth  regretted  the  disappearance. 
A  tolerant,  reverent,  and  kindly  heart." — Leslie  Stephen. 

'*  His  letters  and  prose  writings  give  a  very  favorable  idea 
of  his  moral  character  in  all  respects.  ...  If  I  had  to 
choose,  there  are  one  or  two  persons — and  but  one  or  two — 
that  I  should  like  to  have  been  better  than  Pope  !  " — William 
Hazhtt. 

"'  His  filial  piety  and  steadiness  in  his  friendships  are 
publicly  attested,  and  his  many  private  charities  are  equally 
well  ascertained." — Mark  Pattison. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  All  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  whole, 
Whose  body  nature  is,  and  God  the  soul ; 
That,  changed  through  all,  and  yet  in  all  the  same, 
Great  in  the  earth,  as  in  the  ethereal  frame ; 
Warms  in  the  sun,  refreshes  in  the  breeze, 
Glows  in  the  stars,  and  blossoms  in  the  trees, 
Lives  through  all  life,  extends  through  all  extent, 
Spreads  undivided,  operates  unspent; 


POPE  201 

Jreathes  in  our  soul,  informs  our  mortal  part, 
As  full,  as  perfect,  in  a  hair  as  heart ; 
As  full,  as  perfect,  in  vile  man  that  mourns 
As  the  rapt  seraph  that  adores  and  burns  : 
To  Him  no  high,  no  low,  no  great,  no  small ; 
He  fills,  He  bounds,  connects,  and  equals  all." 

— Essay  on  Man. 

"  To  each  unthinking  being,  Heaven,  a  friend, 
Gives  not  the  useless  knowledge  of  its  end  : 
To  man  imparts  it,  but  with  such  a  view 
As,  while  he  dreads  it,  makes  him  hope  it  too  : 
The  hour  conceal'd,  and  so  remote  the  fear, 
Death  still  draws  nearer,  never  seeming  near. 
Great  standing  miracle  !  that  Heaven  assign'd 
Its  only  thinking  thing  this  turn  of  mind." 

— Essay  on  Man. 

"  Father  of  all !  in  every  age, 

In  every  clime  adored, 
By  saint,  by  savage,  and  by  sage, 
Jehovah,  Jove,  or  Lord  ! 

Save  me  alike  from  foolish  pride 

Or  impious  discontent 
At  aught  thy  wisdom  has  denied 

Or  aught  thy  goodness  lent. 
Teach  me  to  feel  another's  woe, 

To  hide  the  fault  I  see  ; 
That  mercy  I  to  others  show, 

That  mercy  show  to  me." 

—  The  Universal  Prayer. 

II.  Erudition — Wide  Learning. — "He  read  only  to 
store  his  mind  with  facts  and  images,  seizing  all  that  his 
authors  presented  with  undistinguishable  voracity  and  with 
an  appetite  for  knowledge  too  eager  to  be  nice.  .  .  . 
The  '  Essay  on  Criticism '  displays  such  extent  of  compre- 
hension, such  nicety  of  distinction,  such  acquaintance  with 


2O2  POPE 

mankind,  and  such  knowledge  both  of  ancient  and  modern 
learning  as  are  not  often  attained  by  the  maturest  age  and 
longest  experience.  .  .  .  His  frequent  references  to  his- 
tory, his  allusions  to  various  kinds  of  knowledge,  and  his 
images  selected  from  art  and  nature,  with  his  observations  on 
the  operations  of  the  mind  and  the  modes  of  life,  show  an  in- 
telligence perpetually  on  the  wing,  excursive,  vigorous,  and 
diligent,  eager  to  pursue  knowledge  and  attentive  to  retain 
it.  ...  These  benefits  of  nature  he  improved  by  in- 
cessant and  unwearied  diligence;  he  had  recourse  to  every 
source  of  intelligence,  and  lost  no  opportunity  of  informa- 
tion. ' ' — Samuel  Johnson. 

"  The  fact  is,  Pope's  curiosity  was  too  inordinate — his  desire 
to  know  everything  all  at  once  too  strong — to  admit  of  the  de- 
lay of  learning  a  foreign  language  ;  and  he  was  consequently 
a  reader  of  translations.  .  .  .  He  was,  as  a  boy,  a  simply 
ferocious  reader,  and  was  acquainted  with  the  contents  of  the 
great  poets  of  both  antiquity  and  the  modern  world.  His 
studies,  at  once  intense,  prolonged,  and  exciting,  injured  his 
feeble  health,  and  made  him  the  life-long  sufferer  he  was." — 
Augustine  Birr  ell. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

When  first  young  Maro,  in  his  boundless  mind, 
A  work  to  outlast  immortal  Rome  design'd, 
Perhaps  he  seemed  above  the  critic's  law, 
And  but  from  nature's  fountain  scorn'd  to  draw : 
But  when  to  examine  every  part  he  came, 
Nature  and  Homer  were,  he  found,  the  same. 
Convinced,  amazed,  he  checks  the  bold  design  : 
And  rules  as  strict  his  labour'd  work  confine 
As  if  the  Stagyrite  o'erlooked  each  line. 
Learn  hence  for  ancient  rules  a  just  esteem  ; 
To  copy  nature  is  to  copy  them." 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 


203 

"  At  length  Erasmus,  that  great  injured  name, 
(The  glory  of  the  priesthood  and  the  shame  !) 
Stemmed  the  wild  torrent  of  a  barbarous  age, 
And  drove  those  holy  vandals  off  the  stage. 
But  see  !  each  Muse,  in  LEO'S  golden  days, 
Starts  from  her  trance,  and  trims  her  withered  bays. 
Rome's  ancient  genius,  o'er  its  ruins  spread, 
Shakes  off  the  dust,  and  rears  his  reverend  head. 
Then  sculpture  and  her  sister-arts  revive  ; 
Stones  leap'd  to  form,  and  rocks  began  to  live  ; 
With  sweeter  notes  each  rising  temple  rung ; 
A  Raphael  painted,  and  a  Vida  sung. 
Immortal  Vida  !  on  whose  honoured  brow 
The  poet's  bays  and  critic's  ivy  grow  : 
Cremona  now  shall  ever  boast  thy  name, 
As  next  in  place  to  Mantua,  next  in  fame  !  " 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 

12.  Fragmentariness  —  Lack  of  Logical  Se- 
quence.— "  Of  all  the  poets  that  have  practised  reasoning 
in  verse,  Pope  is  the  most  inconsequential  in  the  deduction  of 
his  thoughts  and  the  most  severely  distressed  in  the  effort  to 
effect  or  to  explain  the  dependency  of  their  parts.  There  are 
not  ten  consecutive  lines  in  Pope  unaffected  by  this  infirmity. 
All  his  thinking  proceeded  by  insulated  and  discontinuous 
jets  ;  and  the  only  resource  for  him,  or  chance  of  even  seem- 
ing correctness,  lay  in  the  liberty  of  stringing  his  aphoristic 
thoughts  like  pearls,  having  no  relation  to  each  other  but  that 
of  contiguity.  .  .  The  '  Essay  on  Man  '  sins  chiefly 

by  want  of  a  central  principle  and  by  want,  therefore,  of  all 
coherency  amongst  the  separate  thoughts.  The  '  Essay  on 
Criticism  '  is  a  collection  of  independent  maxims,  tied  to- 
gether into  a  fasciculus  by  the  printer,  but  having  no  natural 
order  or  logical  dependency :  generally  so  vague  as  to  mean 
nothing.  .  .  .  The  '  Atossa  '  is  a  mere  chaos  of  incom- 
patibilities, thrown  together  as  into  some  witch's  cauldron. 
The  witch,  however,  had  sometimes  an  unaffected  malignity, 


204  POPE 

a  sincerity  of  venom  in  her  wrath,  which  acted  chemically  as 
a  solvent  for  combining  the  heterogeneous  ingredients  in  her 
kettle;  whereas  the  want  of  truth  and  earnestness  in  Pope 
leaves  the  incongruities  in  his  kettle  of  description  to  their 
natural  incoherent  operation  on  the  reader.  .  .  .  [The 
4  Essay  on  Man'  is]  an  accumulation  of  diamond  dust  without 
principles  of  coherency.  ...  It  is,  indeed,  the  realiza- 
tion of  anarchy  ;  and  one  amusing  test  of  this  may  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  different  commentators  have  deduced  from  it 
the  very  opposite  theories.  .  .  .  The  «  Essay  on  Man  ' 
in  one  point  resembles  some  doubtful  inscriptions  in  ancient 
forms  of  Oriental  languages,  which,  being  made  up  elliptically 
of  mere  consonants,  can  be  read  into  very  different  senses 
according  to  the  different  sets  of  vowels  which  the  particular 
reader  may  choose  to  interpolate." — De  Quincey. 

"The  first  thing  which  strikes  us  on  a  rapid  survey  of 
Pope's  writings  is  their  fragmentary  nature.  .  .  .  The 
'  Essay  on  Man  '  and  all  the  satires,  imitations,  and  other 
essays  are  only  disjointed  members  or  scraps  of  one  vast  phil- 
osophical work,  which  never  saw  the  light.  This  fragmentary 
character  matters  less  to  us  because  it  is  not  his  substance  or 
his  general  effect  which  we  delight  in  in  Pope  but  his  details. 
His  best  poems  are  bits  of  mosaic,  which  we  admire  the  most 
when  we  pull  them  to  pieces,  tessera  by  tessera,  and  analyze 
their  exquisite  workmanship." — Edmund  Gosse. 

11  He  unluckily  fills  up  the  gaps  in  his  logical  edifice  with 
the  untempered  mortar  of  obsolete  metaphysics,  long  since 
become  utterly  uninteresting  to  men." — Leslie  Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Some  beauties  yet  no  precepts  can  declare, 
For  there's  a  happiness  as  well  as  care. 
Music  resembles  poetry  :  in  each 
Are  nameless  graces  which  no  methods  teach, 
And  which  a  master-hand  alone  can  reach. 


POPE  205 

If,  where  the  rules  not  far  enough  extend, 

(Since  rules  were  made  but  to  promote  their  end,) 

Some  lucky  license  answer  to  the  full 

The  intent  proposed,  that  license  is  a  rule. 

Thus  Pegasus,  a  nearer  way  to  take, 

May  boldly  deviate  from  the  common  track." 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 

"  In  lazy  apathy  let  stoics  boast 
Their  virtue  fix'd  ;  'tis  fixed  as  in  a  frost ; 
Contracted  all,  retiring  to  the  breast ; 
But  strength  of  mind  is  exercise,  not  rest  : 
The  rising  tempest  puts  in  act  the  soul ; 
Parts  it  may  ravage,  but  preserves  the  whole. 
On  life's  vast  ocean  diversely  we  sail, 
Reason  the  card,  but  passion  is  the  gale  ; 
Nor  God  alone  in  the  still  calm  we  find, 
He  mounts  the  storm,  and  walks  upon  the  wind.'' 

— Essay  on  Man. 


13.  Contempt  for  Womanhood.—''  It  is  painful  to 
follow  a  man  of  genius  through  a  succession  of  inanities  de- 
scending into  absolute  nonsense  and  of  vulgar  fictions  some- 
times terminating  in  brutalities.  These  are  harsh  words,  but 
not  harsh  enough  by  half  as  applied  to  Pope's  gallery  of  fe- 
male portraits.  .  .  .  The  describer  knows,  as  well  as  any 
of  us  the  spectators  know,  that  he  is  romancing,  .  .  . 
and  we  cannot  submit  to  be  detained  by  a  picture  which, 
according  to  the  shifting  humor  of  the  poet,  angry  or  laugh- 
ing, is  a  lie  where  it  is  not  a  jest,  is  an  affront  to  the  truth 
of  nature  where  it  is  not  confessedly  an  extravagance  of 
drollery.  In  a  playful  fiction  we  can  submit  with  pleasure  to 
the  most  enormous  exaggerations ;  but  then  they  must  be  of- 
fered as  such.  These  of  Pope's  are  not  so  offered  but  as  se- 
rious portraits  ;  and  in  that  character  they  affect  us  as  odious 
and  malignant  libels.  .  .  .  There  is  no  truth  in  Pope's 
satiric  sketches  of  women — not  even  colorable  truth ;  but  if 


206  POPE 

there  were,  how  frivolous,  how  hollow,  to  erect  into  solemn, 
monumental  protestations  against  the  whole  female  sex  what, 
if  examined,  turn  out  to  be  pure  casual  eccentricities  or  else 
personal  idiosyncrasies  or  else  foibles  shockingly  caricatured, 
but  above  all  to  be  such  foibles  as  could  not  have  connected 
themselves  with  sincere  feelings  of  indignation  in  any  ration- 
al mind.  .  .  .  Pope's  pretended  portraitures  of  women 
the  more  they  ought  to  have  been  true,  as  professing 
to  be  studies  from  life,  the  more  atrociously  they  are  false, 
and  false  in  the  transcendent  sense  of  being  impossible.  Heaps 
of  contradiction  or  of  revolting  extravagance  do  not  ver- 
ify themselves  to  our  loathing  incredulity  because  the  artist 
chooses  to  come  forward  with  his  arms  akimbo,  saying  an- 
grily, '  But  I  tell  you,  sir,  these  are  not  fancy  pieces  !  These 
ladies  whom  I  have  here  lampooned  are  familiarly  known  to 
me;  they  are  my  particular  friends.'  '  — De  Quincey. 

"  In  his  epistle  on  the  character  of  women,  no  one  who  has 
ever  known  a  noble  woman,  nay,  J  should  almost  say  no  one 
who  has  ever  had  a  mother  or  a  sister,  will  find  much  to 
please  him.  The  climax  of  his  praise  rather  degrades  than 
elevates.  .  .  .  His  nature  delighted  more  in  detecting 
the  blemish  than  in  enjoying  the  charm." — Lowell. 

"  Contempt  veiled  under  the  show  of  deference,  a  mockery 
of  chivalry,  its  form  without  its  spirit — this  is  the  attitude  as- 
sumed towards  women  by  the  poet  in  this  piece  ['  Rape  of  the 
Lock'].  This  feeling  towards  woman  is  not  the  poet's  idio- 
syncrasy; here  he  is  but  the  representative  of  his  age." — 
Mark  Pattison. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  Affectation,  with  a  sickly  mien, 
Shows  in  her  cheek  the  roses  of  eighteen  ; 
Practised  to  lisp  and  hang  the  head  aside, 
Faints  into  airs  and  languishes  with  pride  ; 
On  the  rich  quilt  sinks  with  becoming  woe, 


POPE 


207 


Wrapt  in  a  gown,  for  sickness  and  for  show. 
The  fair  ones  feel  such  maladies  as  these, 
When  each  new  night-dress  gives  a  new  disease." 

—  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

"  She  [Queen  Caroline]  wears  no  colours  (sign  of  grace) 
On  any  part  except  her  face  ; 
All  white  and  black  beside  : 
Dauntless  her  look,  her  gesture  proud, 
Her  voice  theatrically  loud, 
And  masculine  her  stride. 

So  have  I  seen  in  black  and  white 
A  prating  thing,  a  magpie  hight, 

Majestically  stalk  : 
A  stately  worthless  animal, 
That  plies  the  tongue  and  wags  the  tail, 

All  flutter,  pride,  and  talk." — Artemisia. 

"Ladies,  like  variegated  tulips,  show; 

'Tis  to  their  changes  half  their  charms  we  owe ; 
Fine  by  defect  and  delicately  weak, 
Their  happy  spots  the  nice  admirer  take. 
'Twas  thus  Calypso  once  each  heart  alarm'd, 
Awed  without  virtue,  without  beauty  charm'd  ; 
Her  tongue  bewitch'd  as  oddly  as  her  eyes  ; 
Less  wit  than  mimic,  more  a  wit  than  wise. 
Strange  graces  still  and  stranger  flights  she  had, 
Was  just  not  ugly,  and  was  just  not  mad  ; 
Yet  ne'er  so  sure  our  passion  to  create, 
As  when  she  touched  the  brink  of  all  we  hate." 

— Epistle  to  a  Lady. 


BURNS,   1759-1796 

Biographical  Outline. — Robert  Burns,  born  at  Allo- 
way,  Scotland,  January  25,  1759  ;  his  father,  a  nursery  gar- 
dener, spelled  his  name  Burness  or  Burnes ;  Burns  attends  a 
school  at  Alloway  Mill  in  his  sixth  year,  and  soon  afterward 
enters  a  private  school  set  up  by  his  father  and  four  neigh- 
bors ;  in  1766  his  father  takes  a  poor  farm  at  Mount  Oliphant, 
two  miles  away,  and  the  school  attendance  of  Burns  and  his 
brother  Gilbert  becomes  irregular  ;  they  are  taught  thereafter 
chiefly  by  their  father  •  in  1772  Robert  attends  a  school  at 
Dalrymple;  he  improves  his  writing,  and  is  in  a  school  at  Ayr 
for  three  weeks  during  the  summer  of  1773,  where  he  learns  a 
bit  of  French ;  at  thirteen  he  is  threshing  corn,  and  at  fifteen 
is  his  father's  chief  laborer  ;  he  learns  many  popular  legends 
from  an  old  woman  neighbor,  and  borrows  and  reads  several 
biographical  and  theological  books  ;  he  reads  also  the  Specta- 
tor, Pope's  translation  of  the  "  Iliad,"  and  some  of  the  works 
of  Smollett,  Ramsay,  and  Fergusson  ;  he  picks  up  French 
readily,  reads  "Telemaque"  and  tries  Latin,  though  with 
little  success  ;  his  literary  talents  attract  the  attention  of  the 
neighbors,  and  his  father  prophesies  that  Robert  will  do  some- 
thing extraordinary;  his  first  poem,  "Handsome  Nell,"  is 
composed  in  the  autumn  of  1775,  and  was  addressed  to  a  fel- 
low-laborer in  the  fields. 

In  1777  his  father  removes  to  a  larger  farm  at  Lochlea, 
farbolton,  while  Robert  goes  to  live  with  an  uncle  at  Balloch- 
neil,  where  he  studies  surveying  at  a  school  in  the  neighbor- 
ing village  of  Kirkeswold  ;  here  he  meets  certain  jovial  smug- 
glers, learns  to  "  fill  his  glass,"  falls  in  love  with  "  a  charming 
fillette,"  scribbles  verses  and  defeats  his  school-master  in  a 

208 


BURNS  209 

debate  when  rashly  challenged  by  the  latter  ;  on  his  return 
to  the  farm  at  Lochlea  he  reads  Thompson,  Shenstone,  Sterne, 
and  Ossian  ;  while  at  Lochlea  he  writes  "Winter,"  "The 
Death  of  Poor  Maillie,"  "John  Barleycorn,"  and  other 
songs;  in  1780  he  joins  a  "Bachelor's  Club"  at  Tarbolton, 
where  he  debates  on  love,  friendship,  etc.;  he  falls  in  love 
with  Ellison  Begbie,  daughter  of  a  neighboring  farmer,  who 
is  the  "  Mary  Morison  "  of  his  poems,  but  he  is  rejected  by 
her  on  his  departure  for  Irvine,  whither  he  goes  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1781  to  enter  a  flax-dressing  business  with  a  relative  of 
his  mother's. 

At  Irvine  he  forms  a  friendship  with  Richard  Brown,  a 
sailor,  who  encourages  him  to  "endeavor  at  the  character  of 
a  poet,"  but  also  leads  him  into  vice;  while  he  is  carousing, 
on  January  i,  1782,  the  flax-dressing  shop  takes  fire  and  is 
destroyed  ;  Burns  thereupon  returns  to  Lochlea,  and  lives  for 
awhile  frugally  and  temperately;  in  April,  1783,  he  begins  a 
commonplace  book,  which  he  continues  at  intervals  through 
many  years  ;  in  1781  he  had  joined  a  Masonic  lodge  at  Tar- 
bolton and  he  remained  an  enthusiastic  Mason  during  life ; 
Burns's  father,  a  devout  Presbyterian  and  the  author  of  a 
little  "  Manual  of  Religious  Belief,"  died  February  13,  1784; 
with  his  brother  Gilbert,  Burns  saves  enough  by  litigation 
over  his  father's  lease  to  start  a  farm  of  one  hundred  and 
eighteen  acres  at  Mossgiel,  near  Mauchline,  where  they  settle 
in  1784  as  subtenants  of  the  writer  Gavin  Hamilton,  who  be- 
comes a  warm  friend  of  Burns  ;  Burns  becomes  known  to  the 
educated  men  of  Mauchline  and  Kilmarnock,  writes  more 
verses,  is  severely  ill,  and  writes  several  lines  expressive  of 
penitence,  but  soon  becomes  the  father  of  an  illegitimate 
child;  his  brother  Gilbert  suggests  that  the  "Epistle  to 
Davie,"  written  in  January,  1785,  will  "  bear  printing  ;  "  he 
writes  the  two  epistles  to  John  Lapraik  in  April,  1785,  and 
"Death  and  Dr.  Hornbrook  "  about  the  same  time;  Dr. 
Hornbrook  is  John  Wilson,  then  a  village  apothecary. 
14 


210  BURNS 

Burns  throws  himself  enthusiastically  into  the  theological 
struggle  then  raging  between  the  "  Auld  Licht "  and  the 
"  New  Licht  "  parties,  during  which  his  landlord  and  friend 
Hamilton  was  twice  tried  for  neglecting  Sunday ;  in  connec- 
tion with  this  controversy  Burns  writes  his  "  Twa  Herds" 
about  April,  1785  ;  it  is  circulated  in  manuscript,  as  is 
"  Holy  Willie's  Prayer,"  written  about  the  same  time;  dur- 
ing 1785  he  writes  also  his  "Holy  Fair"  and  his  "  Cotter's 
Saturday  Night,"  which  describes  his  father's  daily  devotions; 
Burns  succeeded  his  father  as  head  of  the  family,  and  is  said 
to  have  prayed  most  impressively;  while  at  Mossgiel,  1785- 
86  he  writes  also  the  "Address  to  the  Deil,"  "The  Jolly 
Beggars,"  "Twa  Dogs,"  "A  Vision,"  "A  Dream,"  "Hal- 
loween," "To  a  Mouse,"  "  To  a  Mountain  Daisy,"  and 
various  songs  ;  meantime  he  has  fallen  in  love  with  Jean  Ar- 
mour, daughter  of  an  "  Auld  Licht  "  master  mason  of  Mauch- 
line,  and  in  the  spring  of  1786,  when  she  is  about  to  become 
the  mother  of  a  child  by  Burns,  he  gives  her,  according  to  the 
morals  and  customs  of  his  class,  a  written  acknowledgment 
that  she  is  his  wife ;  her  father  declares  that  the  marriage  must 
be  dissolved,  and  she  surrenders  the  document,  thinking,  as 
did  her  friends  and  advisers,  that  this  was  equivalent  to  a  di- 
vorce ;  Burns,  disgusted,  resolves  to  emigrate  and  secure  a 
position  as  overseer  of  an  estate  in  Jamaica  on  a  salary  of 
^"30  a  year  ;  at  Hamilton's  advice  he  decides  to  publish  his 
poems,  to  obtain  the  necessary  passage-money,  and  they  are 
printed  in  Kilmarnock  in  July,  1786;  Burns' s$  friends  sub- 
scribed for  three  hundred  and  fifty  copies ;  five  hundred  and 
ninety- nine  were  sold  by  August  22d,  bringing  him  about 
^20  and  a  considerable  reputation. 

Still  proposing  emigration,  he  makes  over  the  copyright  of 
his  poems  to  his  brother  in  favor  of  his  illegitimate  daughter ; 
for  a  time  he  is  compelled  to  dodge  a  warrant  issued  by 
his  wife's  father,  but  he  is  at  Mossgiel  September  3,  1786, 
when  his  wife  gives  birth  to  twins,  who  live  but  a  short  time ; 


BURNS  211 

meantime  he  has  become  "  betrothed,"  by  an  exchange  of 
Bibles,  to  Mary  Campbell,  daughter  of  a  sailor  from  Dunoon, 
whom  he  had  met  while  she  was  a  nursemaid  in  the  family  of 
Hamilton;  this  passion  is  commemorated  in  Burns's  "  High- 
land Lassie,"  his  "Will  Ye  Go  to  the  Indes,  My  Mary?" 
his  "  To  Mary  in  Heaven  "  (October,  1789),  and  his  "  High- 
land Mary  "  (November,  1792),  and  it  was  the  most  endur- 
ing of  his  life  ;  Mary  Campbell  died  in  October,  1786  ;  Burns 
receives  a  letter  from  Blacklock,  the  blind  poet,  praising  his 
poems  and  urging  a  second  edition  ;  he  is  also  encouraged  by 
Dugald  Stewart,  with  whom  he  is  invited  to  dine  October  23, 
1786,  at  the  instigation  of  Mr.  Mackenzie,  a  surgeon  at  Mauch- 
line ;  his  printer  at  Kilmarnock  refuses  to  take  a  second 
edition  without  an  advance  of  ^£27,  which  Burns  replies  "  is 
out  of  my  power;  "  a  friend,  Mr.  Ballantyne  of  Ayr,  offers  to 
loan  the  money,  but  advises  Burns  to  seek  a  publisher  in  Ed- 
inburgh ;  just  before  going  to  Edinburgh  he  meets  Mrs.  Dun- 
lop  of  Dunlop,  who  becomes  his  friend  and  correspondent 
through  life. 

He  leaves  Mossgiel  November  27,  1786,  riding  a  borrowed 
pony,  and  reaches  Edinburgh  the  next  day  ;  while  in  Edin- 
burgh he  visits  the  grave  of  Fergusson,  to  whom  he  erected  a 
monument  in  the  following  year,  and  meets  Henry  Erskine ; 
Lord  Glencairn,  a  cousin  of  Burns's  friend  Dr.  Dalrymple,  in- 
duces his  aristocratic  friends  to  subscribe  for  a  second  edition 
of  Burns's  poems,  and  Henry  Mackenzie,  the  "  Man  of  Feel- 
ing," reviews  them  enthusiastically  in  the  Lounger,  calling 
Burns  a  "  heaven-taught  ploughman;"  the  poems  are  also 
favorably  noticed  in  the  Edinburgh  Magazine,  and  Burns  is 
welcomed  by  all  the  literary  celebrities  in  Edinburgh,  includ- 
ing the  Duchess  of  Gordon,  Robertson,  Blair,  and  Adam  Fer- 
guson ;  he  also  makes  acquaintance  with  "less  exhalted  cir- 
cles," and  joins  a  convivial  club  called  the  "  Crochallan 
Fencibles,"  for  which  he  writes  verses  not  creditable  to  his 
genius ;  in  the  better  social  circles  he  shines  as  a  conversation- 


212  BURNS 

alist,  and  is  noted  for  his  "  matchless  eyes  like  coals  ofliving 
fire;  "  the  second  edition  of  his  poems  appears  April  31,  1787, 
and  2,800  are  subscribed  for  ;  eventually,  the  edition  brings 
Burns  about  ^500  ;  in  the  spring  of  1787  he  enters  into  an 
agreement  to  contribute  Scotch  songs  to  the  collection  then 
in  preparation,  and  in  May  a  volume  appears  with  two  songs 
by  Burns ;  for  these  and  his  many  other  songs  he  neither 
asked  nor  received  payment,  writing  them  from  purely  patri- 
otic motives;  during  the  summer  of  1787  he  makes  a  tour, 
inspecting  several  farms,  and  collects  several  songs;  with 
Robert  Ainsley,  a  young  writer,  he  visits  Coldstream  (where 
he  crosses  the  bridge,  to  be  in  England),  Kelso,  Jedburgh, 
Alnwick,  Workmath,  Newcastle,  Carlisle,  and  Dumfries,  and 
returns  to  Mauchline  June  Qth  ;  here,  though  disgusted  at  the 
servility  of  her  father  in  view  of  Burns's  new  fame,  he  renews 
his  old  relations  with  Jean  Armour. 

After  a  month  at  Mauchline  and  a  tour  in  the  West  High- 
lands and  Paisley,  he  visits  Edinburgh,  August  7th,  and  there 
chums  with  one  Nichol,  a  self-taught  teacher  at  the  High 
School;  with  Nichol  he  starts,  August  25th,  on  a  tour  to  the 
East  Highlands,  and  visits  Falkirk,  Stirling,  Crieff,  Dankeld, 
Blair,  Dolwhinnie,  through  Shathsprey,  Aviemore,  Dalsie, 
Kilmarnock,  Inverness,  Nairn,  Farres,  and  Tocholers ;  while 
at  Blair  he  is  kindly  received  by  the  Duke  of  Athole  ;  he  re- 
turns by  Aberdeen,  Montrose,  and  Perth,  and  reaches  Edin- 
burgh September  16,  1786  ;  later  in  the  same  year  he  makes 
another  tour  in  the  East  Highlands,  and  visits  Ramsay  at 
Menteith ;  after  his  return  to  Edinburgh,  in  the  fall  of  1786, 
he  lodges  at  No.  2  St.  James  Square;  he  remains  in  Edinburgh 
during  the  winter  of  1786-87,  vainly  trying  to  get  a  settlement 
with  his  publisher  and  continually  talking  of  buying  a  farm  ; 
while  there  he  meets  a  deserted  widow,  Mrs.  M'Lehose,  with 
whom  he  carries  on  afterward  a  long  correspondence  under 
the  names,  respectively,  of  Clarinder  and  Sylvander,  and  with 
whom  he  contemplates  marriage ;  he  leaves  Edinburgh  Feb. 


BURNS 

ruary  16,  1787,  and  visits  Glasgow  on  his  way  to  Mauchline; 
here  he  reconciles  Jean  Armour  to  her  mother,  who  had 
disowned  her  because  of  her  continued  relations  with  Burns  ; 
on  receiving  ^500  from  his  publisher,  he  loans  £90  to  his 
brother,  who  is  still  struggling  with  the  farm  at  Mossgiel. 

In  the  spring  of  1787  Burns  receives  a  "  qualification  "  for 
a  position  as  an  excise  officer ;  he  has  continued  his  letters  to 
Mrs.  M'Lehose,  but  about  this  time  Jean  Armour  gives  birth 
to  a  second  pair  of  twins,  whose  parentage  Burns  acknowl- 
edges;  in  August,  1787,  he  is  legally  married  to  Jean,  they 
are  duly  "  admonished  "  in  church,  and  Burns  gives  a  guinea 
to  the  poor;  in  apologizing  to  Mrs.  M'Lehose,  two  years 
later,  he  encloses  in  a  letter  to  her  his  poem  "  Ae  Fonde 
Kiss,  and  Then  We  Sever  ;  "  meantime  he  had  bought  a  long 
lease  of  a  farm  of  one  hundred  acres,  called  Ellisland,  six 
miles  from  Dumfries;  here  he  comes  June  13,  1789,  and 
begins  to  build  a  house,  his  wife  meanwhile  staying  at  Mauch- 
line, forty-six  miles  away;  to  her  he  refers  in  "O  a'  the 
Airts  the  Wind  Can  Blow  "  and  "  O  Were  I  on  Parnassus 
Hill ;  "  with  his  wife  he  settles  in  the  new  house  in  Decem- 
ber, 1789  ;  about  this  time  he  writes  "  I  Hae  a  Wife  o'  My 
Ain,"  "  Auld  Lang  Syne,"  and  "  My  Bonnie  Mary  ;  "  on 
August  18,  1789,  another  child  was  born  to  him;  soon  af- 
terward, owing  to  poor  returns  from  his  farm,  he  resolves  to 
make  it  a  dairy  farm  and  to  leave  -the  superintendence  of  it 
to  his  wife,  while  he  can  be  earning  something  as  an  excise 
officer ;  he  accordingly  obtains  an  appointment  as  exciseman 
for  his  district,  an  office  bringing  him  a  net  income  of  about 
£40  ;  his  duties  compelled  him  to  ride  two  hundred  miles  a 
week  through  ten  parishes ;  soon  after  his  appointment  he 
writes  ''To  Mary  in  Heaven;"  convivial  meetings  during 
the  autumn  of  1789  are  celebrated  in  "  Willie  Brew'd  a  Peck 
o'  Maut  "  and  the  "  Whistle;  "  while  "  Hear,  Land  o'  Cakes 
and  Brither  Scots ' '  is  addressed  about  the  same  time  to  Fran- 
cis Grose,  the  artist  and  antiquarian  ;  Burns  asks  Grose  to 


214  BURNS 

make  a  drawing  of  Alloway  Kirk,  the  burial-place  of  his 
family,  and  Grose  consents  on  condition  that  Burns  write  for 
him  a  witch  story ;  as  his  part  of  the  bargain  Burns  writes 
"  Tarn  o'  Shanter,"  composing  it  in  one  day  as  he  walked  by 
the  Nith;  "  Tarn  "  first  appeared  in  Grose's  "Antiquities 
of  Scotland"  in  April,  1791. 

Soon  after  settling  at  Ellisland,  Burns  aids  in  establishing 
a  local  library,  and  records  are  now  extant  showing  that  he 
purchased  for  himself,  about  this  time,  many  standard  vol- 
umes ;  he  always  loved  animals  and  detested  field  sports ;  his 
farming  is  a  failure,  and  in  the  summer  of  1791  he  decides  to 
throw  up  his  lease  ;  the  death  of  Burns' s  patron,  Lord  Glen- 
cairn,  in  1791,  gives  rise  to  his  "Lament,"  but  lessens  the 
poet's  chances  of  promotion  to  the  excise  service ;  he  re- 
ceives, however,  an  appointment  as  exciseman  at  Dumfries  at 
a  salary  of  ^70,  and  removes  thither  in  December,  1791,  re- 
siding first  in  what  is  now  Bank  Street  and  later  in  what  is 
now  Burns  Street;  in  April,  1791,  Burns  had  been  presented 
by  his  wife  with  a  third  son  and  by  one  Anne  Park  with  an 
illegitimate  daughter,  whom  Mrs.  Burns  promptly  adopted. 

Burns  again  visited  Edinburgh,  briefly,  in  December, 
1791  ;  at  Dumfries  he  associates  with  the  higher  families,  es- 
pecially with  that  qf  Walter  Riddel,  a  convivialist,  who  had  a 
fine  library  and  a  wife  of  some  poetic  ability  ;  by  reason  of  a 
Jacobite  epigram,  written  long  before  on  a  window  in  Stirling 
Castle,  and  by  some  passages  of  his  poems,  Burns  soon  be- 
comes suspected  as  a  Jacobite  in  the  intense  political  feeling 
due  to  the  French  Revolution,  now  current ;  while  watching 
an  armed  smuggling  vessel  in  the  Norway  Firth,  February  27, 
1792,  Burns  composes  "The  Deil's  Awa  with  the  Excise- 
man ;  "  he  afterward  leads  a  band  of  soldiers  to  the  assault, 
and  is  the  first  to  board  the  ship ;  the  ship  is  condemned, 
and  Burns  buys  her  guns  for  ^3  and  sends  them  as  a  pres- 
ent to  the  French  legislative  body,  and  escapes  dismissal  from 
his  office  only  by  the  intervention  of  his  friend  Graham; 


BURNS  215 

he  joins  a  secret  club,  and  writes  but  suppresses  a  political 
squib,  "The  Truce  of  Liberty;"  he  joins  the  volunteers 
formed  in  1795,  and  gives  offence  by  toasting  Washington  as 
a  greater  man  than  Pitt ;  these  acts  lessen  the  possibility  of 
promotion  to  a  supervisorship  or  a  collectorship,  which  he 
greatly  desired  ;  although  he  leads  an  immoral  life,  he  takes  a 
great  interest  in  the  education  of  his  children  ;  he  becomes  an 
honorary  burgess  of  Dumfries  and  a  member  of  the  town  li- 
brary;  his  "devil "  is  hard  drinking  at  the  country-houses  of 
gentlemen  ;  in  the  autumn  of  1792  Burns  accepts  an  invitation 
to  contribute  Scotch  songs  to  a  collection  then  forming,  the 
melodies  being  first  supplied  ;  among  the  songs  so  contrib- 
uted is  his  "  Scots  Wha  Hae  Wi'  Wallace  Bled,"  composed 
in  July,  1793  ;  during  1794-95  he  writes  several  other  songs 
addressed  to  "Chloris,  the  Lassie  Wi'  the  Lint-white  Locks," 
a  Mrs.  Whepole,  for  whom  Burns's  passion  was  purely  polit- 
ical ;  his  song  "  Oh,  Wert  Thou  in  the  Cauld  Blast,"  was  ad- 
dressed to  a  nurse  during  Burns's  last  illness. 

In  1788,  and  again  in  1794,  he  refuses  to  become  a  regular 
contributor  to  London  journals,  although  offered  a  salary  each 
time  as  large  as  his  annual  excise  fees  ;  he  also  steadfastly 
refuses  to  receive  money  for  his  songs,  saying  that  they  are 
"either  above  or  below  the  price  ;  "  at  Burns's  death,  how- 
ever, the  publisher  of  the  songs  voluntarily  gave  up  his  rights 
in  them  in  favor  of  the  poet's  family  and  also  turned  over  to 
the  heirs  his  correspondence  with  Burns  ;  over  one  hundred 
and  eighty  songs  were  contributed  by  Burns  to  the  "  Musical 
Museum,"  though  only  forty-seven  are  said  to  be  entirely  his 
own  work  ;  Burns's  total  income  at  Dumfries  amounted  to 
about  £90,  which  enabled  him  to  keep  a  servant  and  to  live 
in  comfort;  the  death  of  his  daughter  in  the  autumn  of  1795 
greatly  distresses  him,  and  he  is  ill  from  October  to  Jan- 
uary ;  while  recovering,  he  indulges  in  a  carouse,  sleeps  out 
of  doors,  is  taken  with  rheumatic  fever,  and  his  health  stead- 
ily declines;  he  had  been  afflicted  for  some  time  with  a 


2l6  BURNS 

"  flying  gout,"  which  he  attributed  to  the  follies  of  his  youth ; 
in  his  last  days  he  is  forced  to  ask  loans  of  small  amounts, 
though  his  salary  as  exciseman  is  continued  through  the  per- 
formance of  his  duties  by  a  friend  ;  he  dies  at  Dumfries,  July 
2.1,  1796,  and  a  posthumous  son  is  born  during  the  funeral- 
service  ;  his  family  received  ^£700  from  a  subscription  started 
by  friends  and  ^£1,400  from  an  edition  of  Burns's  poems 
published  in  1800  ;  a  mausoleum  for  Burns  was  erected  at 
Dumfries,  and  his  remains  were  transported  thither  in  Sep- 
tember, 1815. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   CRITICISM   ON    BURNS. 

Stevenson,   R.  L.,    "  Familiar  Studies."     New   York,   1891,  Scribner, 

95-104. 
Morley,  J.,    "English  Men  of  Letters"   (Shairp).     New  York,   1879, 

Harper,  186-205. 
Carlyle,  T.,  "  Heroes  and  Hero- Worship."     London,  1841,  Chapman  & 

Hall,  249-315. 
Brooke,  S.  A.,  "Theology  in  the  English  Poets."     New  York,   1875, 

Appleton,  287-339. 
Carlyle,    T.,    "Critical   and    Miscellaneous    Essays."     London,    1847, 

Chapman  &  Hall,  258-317. 
Jeffrey,  T.,  "  Modern  British  Essayists."     Philadelphia,  1852,  A.  Hart, 

6 :  335-347- 
Shairp,  J.  C,  "Aspects  of  Poetry,"     Boston,  1882,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  164-194. 
Lang,  A.,  "Letters  to  Dead  Authors."     New  York,  1892,  Longmans, 

Green,  &  Co.,  164-172. 
Hazlitt,  W.,    "  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,  1884,  Bell, 

170-189. 
Wilson,  J.,  "The  Genius  and  Character  of  Burns."     New  York,  1872, 

Macmillan,  v.  index. 
Rossetti,  W.   M.,  "Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,   1885,  Moxon, 

189-200. 
Taine,   H.  A.,  "History   of  English    Literature."     New  York,   1875, 

Holt,  3  :  43-6°- 

Hawthorne,  N.,  "  Our  Old  Home."  Boston,  1870,  Osgood,  2  :  225-247. 
Gilfillan,  G.,  "Gallery  of  Literary  Portraits."  Edinburgh,  1845,  Tail, 

I  :  54-64. 


BURNS 

Hoffmann,  F    A.,  "  Poetry,  Its  Origin,"  etc.     London,    1884,  i  :  502- 

521. 
Howitt,  W.,  "Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,  1863, 

Routledge,  379-441. 

Keats,  J.,  "  Poems."     New  York,  n.  d.,  Crowell,  255. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  "Works."     London,  1880,  Macmillan,  20  :  127-184. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  "  Ultima  Thule  "  (nine  stanzas  addressed  to  Burns), 

"Works."     Boston,  1882,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co  ,  397. 
Montgomery,  J.,  "  Lectures  on  Poetry,"  etc.     New  York,  1833,  Harper, 

184-222. 
Russell,  A.  P.,  "Characteristics."     Boston,  1884,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  132-159. 
Shairp,  J.   C,  "On  Poetic  Interpretation  of  Nature."     Boston,    1885, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  212-219. 
Stuart,  J.   M.,   "  Reminiscences   and    Essays."     London,    1884,    Low, 

Marston  &  Co.,  119-155. 
Tuckerman,    H.    T.,    "Thoughts   on   the   Poets."     New   York,   1848, 

Francis,  193-204. 
Moir,   D.    M.,    "  Sketches   of   Poetic    Literature."     Edinburgh,    1852, 

Blackwood,  195-211. 
Campbell,    T.,   "Specimens   of   the   English    Poets,"     London,    1819. 

Murray,  7  :  230-274. 
Cunningham,  A.,  "The  Life  and  Land  of  Robert  Burns."     New  York, 

1841,  Langley,  158-163. 
Craik,  G.   L.,  "A  History  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1864, 

Scribner,  417-446 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  "Miscellanies  "     Boston,  1870,  Fields,  363-369. 
Friswell,  J.  H.,  "Essays  on  English  Writers."     London,  1869,  Lowe, 

350-356- 
Hannay,  J.,  "Satires  and  Satirists."     New  York,  1855,  Redfield,  198- 

204 

Wilson,  J.,  "Essays."     Edinburgh,  1861,  Blackwood,  210-222. 
Blackie,  J.  S.,  "Life  of  Robert  Burns."     London,  1888,  Walter  Scott, 

155-176,  v.  index. 
Gosse,  E.,  "History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature."     New  York, 

1889,  Macmillan,  v.  index. 

Wordsworth,  W.,  "  Poetical  Works."     New  York,  n.  d.,  Crowell,  253. 
Critic,  2  :  337-338  (Walt  Whitman). 

Edinburgh  Review,  48  :  267-312  (Carlyle);  13:  249-276  (Jeffrey). 
Quarterly  Review \  i  :  16-36  (Scott). 

Atlantic,  44;  502-513  (J.  C.  Shairp);  6:  385-395  (Hawthorne). 
Belgravia,  12  1481  (P.  Fitzgerald). 


2 IS  BURNS 

North  American  Review,  143  :  427-435  (Walt  Whitman). 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,  7  :  249-252  (H.  T.  Tuckerman). 
English  Illustrated  Magazine,  17  :  323-325  (A.  Lang). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

\A.  Sincerity  —  Manliness  —  Naturalness.-—  "  The 

^'excellence  of  Burns  is,  indeed,  among  the  rarest,  whether  in 
poetry  or  prose ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  plain  and  easily 
recognized.  .  .  .  The  passion  that  is  traced  before  us 
has  glowed  in  a  living  heart ;  the  opinion  he  utters  has  risen 
in  his  own  understanding  and  has  been  a  light  to  his  own 
steps.  He  does  not  write  from  hearsay  but  from  sight  and 
experience ;  it  is  the  scenes  he  has  lived  and  labored  amidst 
that  he  describes.  ...  He  speaks  forth  what  is  in  him 
because  his  heart  is  too  full  to  be  silent.  ...  It  was  a 
curious  phenomenon,  in  the  withered,  unbelieving,  second- 
hand eighteenth  century,  that  of  a  hero  starting  up  among 
the  artificial  pasteboard  figures  and  productions  in  the  guise 
of  Robert  Burns.  ...  A  noble  rough  genuineness; 
homely,  rustic,  honest ;  true  simplicity  of  strength ;  with  its 
lightning  fire,  with  its  dewey  pity.  .  .  .  We  recollect 
no  poet  of  Burns's  susceptibility  who  comes  before  us  at  the 
first  and  abides  with  us  to  the  last  with  such  a  total  want  of 
affectation.  He  is  an  honest  man  and  an  honest  writer. 
A  certain  rugged  sterling  worth  pervades  whatever 
Burns  has  written ;  a  virtue  as  of  green  fields  and  mountain 
breezes  dwells  in  his  poetry ;  it  is  redolent  of  natural  life  and 
hardy  natural  men.  .  .  .  In  his  successes  and  his  failures, 
in  his  greatness  and  his  littleness,  he  is  ever  clear,  simple,  true, 
and  glitters  with  no  lustre  but  his  own.  .  .  .  The  chief 
excellence  of  Burns  is  his  sincerity  and  indisputable  air  of 
truth.  Here  are  no  fabulous  woes  or  joys  ;  no  hollow  fan- 
tastic sentimentalities. ' ' — Carlyle. 

<l  Consider  the  perfect  naturalness,  the  entire  spontaneity, 
of  his  singing.     It  gushes  from  him  as  easily,  as  clearly,  as 


BURNS  2IQ 

serenely  as  the  skylark's  song  does.  In  this  he  surpasses  all 
other  song-composers.  In  truth,  when  he  is  at  his  best,  when 
his  soul  is  really  filled  with  his  subject,  it  is  not  composing  at 
all ;  the  word  is  not  applicable  to  him.  He  sings  because  he 
cannot  help  singing — because  his  heart  is  full  and  could  not 
otherwise  relieve  itself.  .  .  .  The  characteristics  of  the 
best  songs  of  Burns  are  absolute  truthfulness,  truthfulness  to 
the  great  facts  of  life,  truthfulness  also  to  the  singer's  own  feel- 
ings— what  we  mean  by  sincerity,  second,  perfect  naturalness  : 
the  feeling  embodies  itself  in  a  form  and  language  as  natural 
to  the  poet  as  its  song  is  to  the  bird.  This  is  what  Pitt  noted 
when  he  said  of  Burns's  poems  that  no  verse  since  Shake- 
speare's has  so  much  the  appearance  of  coming  sweetly  from 
nature.  I  should  venture  to  hint  that  in  this  gift  of  perfect 
spontaneity  Burns  was  even  beyond  Shakespeare. 
At  the  basis  of  all  his  powers  lay  absolute  truthfulness,  intense 
reality,  truthfulness  to  the  objects  which  he  saw,  truthfulness 
to  himself  as  the  seer  of  them.  .  .  .  He  expressed  what 
he  saw,  not  in  the  stock  phrase  of  books,  but  in  his  own  ver- 
nacular, the  language  of  his  fireside,  with  a  directness,  a  force, 
a  vitality  that  tingled  to  the  finger  tips." — Principal  Shairp. 

"  Burns  has  one  of  the  noblest  qualities  a  man  can  possess 
— entire  sincerity  with  himself.  .  .  .  And  his  only  wish 
was  not  to  produce  fine  spun  notions  or  to  please  the  critics 
but  to  touch  the  heart." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

"  No  poet  since  the  Psalmist  of  Israel  ever  gave  the  world 
more  assurance  of  a  man  ;  none  lived  a  life  more  strenuous, 
engaged  in  eternal  conflict  of  the  passions  and  by  them  over- 
come— ' mighty  and  mightily  fallen.'  "—Andrew  Lang. 

"His  character  was  remarkable  for  its  manliness,  its  sin- 
cerity, and  its  independence.  .  .  .  Where  can  we  find 
another  poet  with  an  imagination  capable  of  so  idealizing  the 
subject  and  yet  so  familiar  with  its  details  as  to  present  a 
picture  as  true  as  it  is  beautiful?  " — Emerson. 

"  After  full  retrospect  of  his  works  and  life,  the  '  odd  kind 


22O  BURNS 

chiel '  remains  to  my  heart  and  brain  as  almost  the  tenderest, 
manliest,  dearest  flesh-and-blood  figure  in  all  the  streams  and 
clusters  of  by-gone  poets.     ...     He  treats  fresh,  often 
coarse,   natural  occurrences,   loves,   persons,   not  like  many 
new  and  some  old  poets  in  a  genteel  style  of  gilt  and  china,  or 
at  second  or  third  removes,  but  in  their  own   atmosphere, 
laughter,  sweat,  unction." — Walt  Whitman. 
"  He  kept  his  honesty  and  truth, 
His  independent  tongue  and  pen, 
And  moved  in  manhood  as  in  youth, 
Pride  of  his  fellow  men. 

A  kind,  true  heart,  a  spirit  high, 

That  could  not  fear  and  would  not  bow, 

Were  written  in  his  manly  eye 

And  on  his  manly  brow." — Fitz- Greene  Halleck. 

"  There  was  a  thorough  and  prevailing  honesty  about 
Burns — that  freedom  from  disguise  and  simple  truth  of  char- 
acter, to  the  preservation  of  which  rustic  life  is  eminently 
favorable.  He  was  open  and  frank  in  social  intercourse,  and 
his  poems  are  but  the  sincere  records  and  out-pourings  of  his 
mature  feelings.  .  .  .  Burns  lost  not  the  susceptibility  of 
his  conscience  nor  the  sincerity  and  manliness  of  his  charac- 
ter."—^ T.  Tuckerman. 

"  He  had  a  real  heart  of  flesh  and  blood  beating  in  his 
bosom — you  can  almost  hear  it  throb.  He  has  made  us  as 
well  acquainted  with  himself  as  it  is  possible  to  be,  has  let  out 
the  honest  impulses  of  his  native  disposition,  the  unequal 
conflict  of  the  passions  in  his  breast,  with  the  same  frankness 
and  truth  of  description." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  For  the  first  time  this  man  spoke  as  men  speak,  or  rather 
as  they  think,  without  premeditation,  with  a  mixture  of  all 
styles,  familiar  and  terrible,  hiding  an  emotion  under  a  joke, 
tender  and  jeering  in  the  same  place,  apt  to  place  side  by  side 


BURNS  221 

tap-room  trivialities  and  the  high  language  of  poetry.  .  .  . 
At  last,  after  so  many  years,  we  escape  from  measured  decla- 
mation, we  hear  a  man's  voice.  ...  So  indifferent  was 
he  to  rules,  content  to  exhibit  his  feeling  as  it  came  to  him 
and  as  he  felt  it." — Taine. 

"  Even  in  his  most  graceless  sneer,  his  fault — if  fault  it  be 
— is  that  he  cannot  and  will  not  pretend  to  respect  that  which 
he  knows  to  be  unworthy  of  respect." — Charles  Kingsley. 

"  Fresh  as  the  flower,  whose  modest  worth 
He  sang,  his  genius  glinted  forth — 

It  showed  my  youth 

How  Verse  may  build  a  princely  throne  on  humble 
truth.1 ' —  Wordsworth. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  God  knows,  I'm  no  the  thing  I  should  be, 
Nor  am  I  even  the  thing  I  could  be, 
But,  twenty  times,  I  rather  would  be 

An  atheist  clean 

Than  under  gospel  colours  hid  be, 
Just  for  a  screen. 

An  honest  man  may  like  a  glass, 
An  honest  man  may  like  a  lass, 
But  mean  revenge  an'  malice  fause 

He'll  still  disdain, 
An'  then  cry  zeal  for  Gospel  laws 

Like  some  we  ken." 

—Epistle  to  the  Rev.  John  Me  Math. 

"  It's  no  in  titles  nor  in  rank, 

It's  no  in  wealth  like  Lon'on  bank, 

To  purchase  peace  and  rest : 
It's  no  in  making  muckle  mair, 
It's  no  in  books  ;  it's  no  in  lear 

To  make  us  truly  blest ; 


¥. 


222  BURNS 

.   If  happiness  hae  not  her  seat 

And  center  in  the  breast, 
We  may  be  wise  or  rich  or  great, 
But  never  can  be  blest." 

— Epistle  to  Davie. 

11  All  hail,  Religion  !  maid  divine! 
Pardon  a  muse  sae  mean  as  mine, 
Who  in  her  rough  imperfect  line 
Thus  dares  to  name  thee  ; 
To  stigmatize  false  friends  of  thine, 
Can  ne'er  defame  thee." 

—Epistle  to  the  Rev.  John  McMath. 

2.  Tenderness  —  Pathos. — "  Tears  lie  in  him,  and 
consuming  fire,  as  lightning  lurks  in  the  drops  of  the  summer 
cloud ;  and  yet  he  is  sweet  and  soft,  sweet  as 

the  smile  when  fond  lovers  meet  and  soft  as  their  parting 
tear.  ...  A  thousand  battle-fields  remain  unsung ; 
but  the  Wounded  Hare  has  not  perished  without  its  me- 
morial. .  .  .  How  his  heart  flows  out  in  sympathy 
over  universal  nature,  and  in  her  bleakest  provinces  discerns 
a  beauty  and  a  meaning !  '  The  Daisy  '  falls  not  unheeded 
under  his  ploughshare,  nor  the  ruined  nest  of  that  '  wee,  sleek- 
it,  cowrin'  tim'rous  beastie,'  cast  forth,  after  all  its  provident 
pains,  to  thole  the  sleety  dribble,  and  cranneuch  cauld." — 
Carlyle. 

"As  for  his  tenderness — the  quality  without  which  all 
other  poetic  excellence  is  barren — it  gushes  forth  toward  every 
creature,  animate  and  inanimate,  with  one  exception,  namely, 
the  hypocrite." — Charles  Kingsley. 

"  His  forte  was  in  humor  and  in  pathos — or  rather  in  ten- 
derness of  feeling.  .  .  .  His  tenderness  is  of  two  sorts  ; 
that  which  is  combined  with  circumstances  and  characters  of 
humble  and  sometimes  ludicrous  simplicity,  and  that  which 
is  produced  by  gloomy  and  distressful  impressions  acting  on 


BURNS  223 

a  mind  of  keen  sensibility.  .  .  .  The  exquisite  descrip- 
tion of  '  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night '  affords  perhaps  the 
finest  example  of  this  the  finest  sort  of  pathos.  .  .  .  The 
charm  of  the  fine  lines  written  on  turning  up  a  mouse's  nest 
with  the  plough  will  also  be  found  to  consist  in  the  simple 
tenderness  of  delineation.  .  .  .  The  verses  to  a  '  Moun- 
tain Daisy,'  though  more  elegant  and  picturesque,  seem  to 
derive  their  chief  beauty  from  the  same  tone  of  sentiment. 
.  .  .  Sometimes  it  is  the  brief  and  simple  pathos  of  an  old 
ballad.  .  .  .  Sometimes  it  is  animated  with  airy  narra- 
tive and  adorned  with  images  of  the  utmost  elegance  and 
beauty.  .  .  .  Sometimes,  again,  it  is  plaintive  and  mourn- 
ful, in  the  same  strain  of  unaffected  sympathy." — Francis 
Jeffrey. 

"  He  speaks  to  the  Devil,  in  his  address  to  that  personage, 
as  to  an  unfortunate  comrade,  a  disagreeable  fellow,  but  fallen 
into  trouble.  .  .  .  Burns  pities,  and  that  sincerely,  a 
wounded  hare,  a  mouse  whose  nest  was  upturned  by  his 
plough,  a  mountain  daisy.  Is  there  such  a  great  difference 
between  man  and  beast  and  plant  ?  " — Taine. 

"In  Burns  the  further  widening  of  human  sympathies  is 
shown  in  the  new  tenderness  for  animals.     The  birds,  sheep, 
cattle,  and  wild  creatures  of  the  wood  and  field  fill  as  large  a 
space  in  the  poetry  of  Burns  as  in  that  of  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge.     .     .     .     He  transfers  the  depths  of  his  personal 
affection  to  natural  objects,  and  speaks  of  them  with  often  a 
sudden  tenderness  and  exquisite  mournfulness  of  pity  or  as 
quick  sympathy  with  their  joy." — Stopford  Brooke. 
"  We  love  him  not  for  sweetest  song, 
Tho'  never  tone  so  tender." — O.  W.  Holmes. 

"  With  familiar  tenderness  he  dwelt  on  the  lower  creatures, 
felt  for  their  sufferings,  as  if  they  had  been  his  own,  and 
opened  men's  hearts  to  feel  how  much  the  groans  of  creation 
are  needlessly  increased  by  the  indifference  or  cruelty  of 
man.—;/.  C.  Shairp. 


224  BURNS 

"It  is  not  everyone  who  can  perceive  the  sublimity  of  a 
daisy  or  the  pathos  to  be  extracted  from  a  withered  thorn." 
—  William  Hazlitt. 

"It  was  this  notable  amount  of  backbone  and  force  of  arm, 
sensibly  felt  in  his  utterances,  which  gave  to  his  pathos  and 
tenderness  such  healthy  grace  and  such  rare  freedom  from 
anything  that  savored  of  sentimentality.  The  Christian 
element  of  pity  also  had  a  deep  fount  in  his  rich  human  heart, 
and  a  tear  of  common  blooded  affinity  was  ever  ready  to  be 
dropt,  not  only  over  the  sorrows  of  an  injured  woman,  but 
over  the  pangs  of  a  hunted  hare  or  the  terror  of  a  startled 
field-mouse." — John  Stuart  Blackie. 

"  Of  all  the  men  that  ever  lived,  Burns  was  least  of  a  senti- 
mentalist. He  was  your  true  man  of  feeling.  He  did  not 
preach  to  Christian  people  of  the  duty  of  humanity  to  animals; 
he  spoke  of  them  in  winning  words,  warm  from  the  manliest 
breast,  as  his  fellow-creatures,  and  made  us  feel  what  we  owe. 
.  .  .  His  nature  was  indeed  human ;  and  the  tenderness 
and  kindliness  apparent  in  every  page  of  his  poetry — and  most 
of  all  in  his  Songs — cannot  but  have  a  humanizing  effect  on 
all  those  exposed  by  the  necessities  of  their  condition  to  many 
causes  for  ever  at  work  to  harden  or  shut  up  the  heart. 
With  a  rare  power  of  pathos  and  artless  eloquence, 
which  could  invest  a  common  daisy  with  human  life  and 
interest  and  infuse  into  the  breast  of  the  hare,  the  mouse,  or 
the  little  bird,  a  microcosm  of  human  feeling  and  emotion, 
Burns,  with  no  less  poetic  power  and  tenderness,  but  with 
more  practical  philosophy,  went  down  into  the  very  heart  of 
the  Scottish  peasant  and  brought  forth  materials  with  which  to 
forma  noble  and  a  perfect  man."— John  Wilson  [Christo- 
pher North.] 


BURNS  225 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Wee,  sleekit,  cowrin',  tim'rous  beastie, 
O,  what  a  panic's  in  thy  breastie  ! 
Thou  need  na  start  awa  sae  hasty, 

Wi'  bickering  brattle  !  fhurryj 
I  wad  be  laith  to  rin  and  chase  thee, 

Wi'  murd'ring  pattle  !  [paddle] 

I'm  truly  sorry  man's  dominion 
Has  broken  Nature's  social  union, 
An'  justified  that  ill  opinion 

Which  makes  thee  startle 
At  me,  thy  poor,  earth-born  companion, 

An'  fellow-mortal." — Address  To  a  Mouse. 

"  Why,  ye  tenants  of  the  lake, 

For  me  your  watery  haunts  forsake  ? 
Tell  me,  fellow-creatures,  why 
At  my  presence  thus  you  fly ; 
Why  disturb  your  social  joys, 
Parent,  filial,  kindred  ties  ? 
Common  friend  to  you  and  me, 
Nature's  gifts  to  all  are  free." 

—  On  Scaring'  Some  Water-Fowl. 

"  Go  live,  poor  wanderer  of  the  wood  and  field, 
The  bitter  little  that  of  life  remains  ; 
No  more  the  thickening  brakes  and  verdant  plains 
To  thee  shall  home  or  food  or  pastime  yield. 

Seek,  mangled  wretch,  some  place  of  wonted  rest, 
No  more  of  rest,  but  now  thy  dying  bed  ! 
The  sheltering  rushes  whistling  o'er  thy  head, 
The  cold  earth  with  thy  bloody  bosom  prest." 

— On  Seeing  a  Wounded  Hare  Limp  By. 

3.  Vigor — Spirit. — "  Burns  expressed  what  he  saw,  not 
in  the  stock  phrases  of  books,  but  in  his  own  vernacular,  the 
language  of  his  fireside,  with  a  directness,  a  force,  a  vitality, 


226  BURNS 

that  tingled  to  the  fingertips,  and  forced  the  phrases  of  his 
peasant  dialect  into  literature,  and  made  them  forever  classi- 
cal. .  .  .  Burns' s  keenness  of  insight  keeps  pace  with 
his  keenness  of  feeling.  .  .  .  Here  was  a  man,  a  son  of 
toil  looking  out  on  the  world  from  his  cottage,  on  society 
high  and  low,  and  on  nature  homely  or  beautiful,  with  the 
clearest  eye,  a  most  piercing  insight,  .  .  .  seeing  to  the 
core  all  the  sterling  worth,  nor  less  the  pretence  and  hollow- 
ness  of  the  men  he  met,  the  humor,  the  drollery,  the  pathos 
and  the  sorrow  of  human  existence." — -J.  C.  Shairp. 

"Observe  with  what  a  fierce,  prompt  force  he  grasps  his 
subject,  be  what  it  may !  How  he  fixes,  as  it  were,  the  full 
image  of  the  matter  in  his  eyes ;  full  and  clear  in  every  linea- 
ment ;  and  catches  the  real  type  and  essence  of  it  amid  the 
thousand  accidents  and  superficial  circumstances,  no  one  of 
which  misleads  him  !  .  .  .  Of  the  strength,  the  piercing 
emphasis  with  which  he  thought,  his  emphasis  of  expression 
may  give  a  humble  but  the  readiest  proof.  Who  ever  uttered 
sharper  sayings  than  his  ;  words  more  memorable,  now  by 
their  burning  vehemence,  now  by  their  cool  vigor  and  laconic 
pith  ?  A  single  phrase  depicts  a  whole  subject,  a  whole 
phase.  We  discern  the  brawny  movements  of  a  gigantic 
though  untutored  strength,  and  can  understand  how,  in  con- 
versation, his  quick,  sure  insight  into  men  may,  as  much  as 
aught  else  about  him,  have  amazed  the  best  thinkers  of  his 
time  and  country.  .  .  .  If  we  look  at  his  general  force 
of  soul,  his  healthy  robustness,  every  way,  the  rugged  down- 
rightness,  penetration,  generous  valor,  and  manfulness  that 
was  in  him — where  shall  we  readily  find  a  better-gifted  man  ? 
.  .  .  Burns  is  not  more  distinguished  by  the  clearness 
than  by  the  impetuous  force  ovf  his  conceptions.  ...  In 
fact,  one  of  the  leading  features  in  the  mind  of  Burns  is  this 
vigor  of  his  strictly  intellectual  perceptions." — Carlyle. 

"  We  may  say  of  him  without  excess  that  his  style  was  his 
slave.  Hence  that  energy  so  concise,  so  telling  that  a  foreigner 


BURNS  227 

is  tempted  to  explain  it  by  some  special  richness  or  aptitude 
in  the  dialect  he  wrote.  ...  It  was  by  his  style  and 
not  by  his  matter  that  he  affected  Wordsworth  and  the  world. 
They  [his  works]  interest  us  not  in  themselves  but 
because  they  have  passed  through  the  spirit  of  so  genuine  and 
vigorous  a  man.  Such  is  the  stamp  of  living  literature,  and 
there  was  never  any  more  alive  than  that  of  Burns." — Robert 
Louis  Stevenson. 

"  The  fire  and  fervor  without  which  lyrical  poetry  is  scarce 
worthy  of  the  name,  Burns  possessed  in  a  high  degree.  .  .  . 
He  was  emphatically  a  strong  man ;  there  was,  as  Carlyle 
says,  '  a  certain  rugged  sterling  worth  about  him,'  which 
makes  his  songs  as  good  as  sermons  sometimes,  and  sometimes 
as  good  as  battles.  .  .  .  But  it  is  not  simply  fire  from 
within,  consuming  itself  in  the  glow  of  some  special  pet  en- 
thusiasm, but  it  was  a  fire  that  went  out  contagiously  and 
seized  whatever  fuel  it  might  find  in  the  motley  fair  of  the 
largest  human  life.  .  .  .  Then  again,  the  general  vigor 
of  mind  was  as  notable  as  his  vigor  of  body  ;  he  was  as  strong 
in  thought  as  intense  in  emotion." — John  Stuart  Blackie. 

''Who  can  praise  them  [Burns' s  poems]  too  highly,  who 
admire  in  them  too  much  the  humor,  the  scorn,  the  wisdom, 
the  unsurpassed  energy  and  courage." — Andrew  Lang. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  fig  for  those  by  law  protected  ! 

Liberty's  a  glorious  feast ! 
Courts  for  cowards  were  erected, 
Churches  built  to  please  the  priest. 

Life  is  all  a  variorum, 

We  regard  not  how  it  goes  ; 
Let  them  cant  about  decorum, 

Who  have  characters  to  lose." 

—  The  Jolly  Beggars. 


228  BURNS 

"  The  wind  blew  as  'twad  blawn  its  last ; 
The  rattling  show'rs  rose  on  the  blast ; 
The  speedy  gleams  the  darkness  swallow'd  ; 
Loud,  deep,  and  lang,  the  thunder  bellow'd ; 
That  night,  a  child  might  understand 
The  Deil  had  business  on  his  hand. 

Before  him  doon  pours  all  his  floods  ; 
The  doubling  storm  roars  thro'  the  woods  ; 
The  lightnings  flash  from  pole  to  pole  ; 
Near  and  more  near  the  thunders  roll." 

—  Tarn  O'  Shanter. 

"  Though  I  canna  ride  in  weell-booted  pride, 
And  flee  o'er  the  hills  like  a  craw,  man, 
I  can  haud  up  my  head  wi'  the  best  o'  the  breed, 
Though  fluttering  ever  so  braw,  man." 

— The  Tarbolton  Lasses. 

4.  Patriotism.  —  Carlyle's  estimate  of  the  value  of 
'Burns's  songs  is  hardly  exaggerated,  and  yet,  though  in  se- 
verely straitened  circumstances  when  he  composed  the  most 
and  the  best  of  these  songs,  Burns  proudly  refused  to  accept 
any  remuneration;  and  "he  appears  to  have  been  taken  at 
his  word  by  every  one  concerned."  Burns  wrote  to  his 
friend  Mrs.  Dunlop:  "Scottish  scenes  and  Scottish  stories 
are  the  themes  I  could  wish  to  sing.  I  have  no  dearer  aim 
than  to  have  it  in  my  power,  unplagued  by  the  routine  of 
business,  for  which  heaven  knows  I  am  unfit  enough,  to  make 
leisurely  pilgrimages  through  Caledonia ;  to  sit  on  the  fields 
of  her  battles;  to  wander  on  the  romantic  banks  of  her  rivers ; 
and  to  muse  by  the  stately  towers  and  venerable  rums  over 
the  honored  abodes  of  her  heroes. ' ' 

"In  no  heart  did  the  love  of  country  burn  with  a  warmer 
glow  than  in  that  of  Burns.  'A  tide  of  Scottish  prejudice,' 
as  he  modestly  calls  this  deep  and  generous  feeling,  '  had  been 
poured  along '  his  veins ;  and  he  felt  that  it  would  boil  there 
until  the  flood-gates  'shut  in  eternal  rest.'  .  .  .  But  his 


BURNS  229 

example  in  the  fearless  adoption  of  domestic  subjects  could 
not  but  operate  from  afar.  It  seemed  to  him  as  if  he  could 
do  so  little  for  his  country,  and  yet  he  would  have  gladly 
done  all." — Carlyle. 

"He  made  the  poorest  ploughman  proud  of  his  station 
and  toil,  since  Bobbie  Burns  had  shared  and  sung  them. 
He  had  longed  from  his  boyhood  to  shed  upon  the 
unknown  streams  of  his  native  Ayrshire  some  of  the  power 
which  generations  of  minstrels  had  shed  upon  Yarrow  and 
Tweed.  Burns  in  his  poetry  was  not  only  the  interpreter  of 
Scotland's  peasantry,  he  was  the  restorer  of  her  nationality. 
Among  these  literary  men  in  walked  Burns,  who, 
with  the  instinct  of  genius,  chose  for  his  subject  that  Scottish 
life  which  they  ignored  and  for  his  vehicle  that  vernacular 
which  they  despised,  and  who,  touching  the  springs  of  long- 
forgotten  emotions,  brought  back  on  the  hearts  of  his  country- 
men a  tide  of  patriotic  feeling  to  which  they  had  long  been 
strangers." — J.  C.  Shairp. 

"  His  patriotism  was  of  the  true  poetic  kind — intense — ex- 
clusive. Scotland  and  the  climate  of  Scotland  were  to  his 
eyes  the  dearest  in  Nature — Scotland  and  the  people  of  Scot- 
land were  and  had  been  such  as  to  starve  the  flame  of  patriot- 
ism. ...  A  peasant  appeared  and  set  himself  to  check 
the  creeping  pestilence  of  this  indifference.  Whatever  genius 
has  since  been  devoted  to  the  illustration  of  the  national  man- 
ners and  sustaining  thereby  the  national  feeling  of  the  people, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Burns  will  be  remembered  as  the 
founder  and  alas  !  in  his  own  person  as  the  martyr  of  this  ref- 
ormation."— -J.  G.  Lockhart. 

*'  To  have  recreated  that  national  feeling,  that  deep  and 
unquenchable  patriotism  which  has  made  Scotland,  small  and 
poor,  a  force  in  the  great  universe,  is  no  small  work." — Ma- 
caulay. 

"  Burns  is  a  thorough  Scotchman — the  flavor  of  the  soil  can 
be  tasted  in  everything  he  wrote." — Emerson. 


230  BURNS 

"The  special  nationality  of  Scotch  poetry  is  stronger  in 
Burns's  poetry  than  in  any  of  his  predecessors,  but  it  is  also 
mingled  with  a  larger  view  of  man  than  the  merely  national 
one.  ...  He  keeps  himself  throughout  to  Scottish  sub- 
jects ;  his  scenery  is  entirely  Scottish,  his  love  of  liberty  con- 
centrates itself  round  Scottish  struggles  ;  his  muse  is  wholly 
untravelled.  .  .  .  When  the  muse  of  Scotland  appeared 
to  him,  she  bade  him  sing  his  own  people  ;  her  mantle  was 
adorned  with  the  rivers,  hills,  and  boroughs  of  Scotland,  and 
in  her  face  was  the  character  of  Scotland's  poets." — Stopford 
Brooke. 

11  Another  quality  Burns  possessed  in  an  eminent  degree,  a 
quality  which  tended  to  make  him  the  idol  of  his  countrymen, 
and  that  was  patriotism,  a  virtue  which,  as  Carlyle  remarks, 
was,  in  the  days  of  Hume  and  Robertson  and  Blair,  anything 
but  common  in  the  literary  atmosphere  of  Scotland.  .  .  -. 
On  one  point  there  can  be  no  controversy,  the  poetry  of  Burns 
has  had  the  most  powerful  influence  in  reviving  and  strength- 
ening the  national  feelings  of  his  countrymen.  Amidst  pen- 
ury and  labor,  his  youth  fed  on  the  old  minstrelsy  and  tradi- 
tional glories  of  his  nation,  and  his  genius  divined  that  what 
he  felt  so  deeply  must  belong  to  a  spirit  that  might  lie  smoth- 
ered around  him,  but  could  not  be  extinguished,  and  that  was 
the  spirit  of  patriotism.  "—John  Stuart  Blackie. 

"  The  poor  man,  as  he  speaks  of  Robert  Burns,  always  holds 
up  his  head  and  regards  you  with  an  elated  look.  A  tender 
thought  of  the  '  Cotter's  Saturday  Night '  or  a  bold  thought 
of  '  Scots  wha  hae  wi'  Wallace  bled,'  may  come  across  him  ; 
and  he  who  in  such  a  spirit  loves  home  and  country,  by 
whose  side  may  he  not  walk  an  equal  in  the  broad  eye  of  day 
as  it  shines  over  our  Scottish  hills?" — Professor  Wilson 
[Christopher  North]. 

"  Burns  is,  in  fact,  the  demigod,  prophet,  priest,  and  king 
of  Scotland.  .  .  .  This  is,  after  all,  the  greatest  of  Burns's 
poetical  merits — that  he  has  Scotized  poetry,  .  .  .  and 


BURNS  231 

has  drawn  to  him  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  like  the  draft 
of  a  roaring  fiery  furnace." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  O  Scotia  !  my  dear,  my  native  soil ! 

For  whom  my  warmest  wish  to  Heaven  is  sent ; 
Long  may  thy  hardy  sons  of  rustic  toil 

Be  blest  with  health  and  peace  and  sweet  content ! 

And,  Oh !  may  Heaven  their  simple  lives  prevent 
From  luxury's  contagion,  weak  and  vile  ! 

Then,  howe'er  crown  and  coronets  be  rent, 
A  virtuous  populace  may  rise  the  while, 
And  stand  a  wall  of  fire  around  their  much-loved  isle." 

—  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night. 

"  Wild  beats  my  heart  to  brace  your  steps, 

Whose  ancestors,  in  days  of  yore, 
Through  hostile  ranks  and  ruin'd  gaps 
Old  Scotia's  bloody  lion  bore  : 
Even  I  who  sing  in  rustic  lore, 
Haply  my  sires  have  left  their  shed, 

And  faced  grim  Danger's  loudest  roar, 
Bold-following  where  your  fathers  led  !  " 

— Address  to  Edinburgh. 

"  Wha  for  Scotland's  King  and  law 
Freedom's  sword  will  strongly  draw, 
Free  man  stand,  or  free  man  fa', 
Caledonian  !  on  wi*  me  !  " — Bannockburn. 

5.    Broad   Human   Sympathy— Moral   Insight. — 

"  No  wonder  the  Scottish  peasantry  have  loved  Burns  as  per- 
haps never  people  loved  a  poet.  He  not  only  sympathized 
with  the  wants,  the  trials,  the  joys,  the  sorrows  of  their  ob- 
scure lot,  but  he  interpreted  these  to  themselves,  and  inter- 
preted them  to  others,  and  too  in  their  own  language,  made 
musical  and  glorified  by  genius.  .  .  .  What  flashes  of 
moral  insight,  piercing  to  the  quick  !  What  random  sayings 


232  BURNS 

flung  forth  that  have  become  proverbs  in  all  lands — mottoes 
of  the  heart.  ...  He  interpreted  the  lives,  thoughts, 
feelings,  manners  of  the  Scottish  peasantry  to  whom  he  be- 
longed, as  they  had  never  been  interpreted  before  and  never 
can  be  again.  .  .  .  Of  his  instinctive  knowledge  of  men 
of  all  ranks  there  is  no  need  to  speak,  for  every  line  attests  it. 
.  .  .  Of  his  songs,  one  main  characteristic  is  that  their 
subjects,  the  substance  they  lay  hold  of,  belongs  to  what  is 
most  permanent  in  humanity — those  primary  affections,  those 
permanent  relations  of  life  which  cannot  change  while  man's 
nature  remains  what  it  is.  In  this  they  are  wholly  unlike  the 
songs  which  seize  on  the  changing  aspects  of  society.  .  .  . 
Happy  as  a  singer  Burns  was  in  this,  that  his  own  strong  nat- 
ure, his  birth,  and  all  his  circumstances,  conspired  to  fix  his 
interest  on  the  primary  and  permanent  affections,  the  great 
fundamental  relations  of  life,  which  men  have  always  with 
them — not  on  the  social  conventions  and  ephemeral  modes, 
which  are  here  to-day,  forgotten  in  the  next  generation. 
.  .  .  Burns' s  sympathy  and  thoughts  were  not  confined 
to  class  and  country  ;  they  had  something  more  catholic  in 
them,  they  reached  to  universal  man."— y.  C.  Shairp. 

"All  his  religion,  he  says,  came  from  the  heart;  and  it 
drove  him — when  he  thought  of  this  poor  people  and  their 
hard  lives,  and  how  beautiful  they  often  were  with  maternal 
feeling ;  when  he  thought  how  much  they  suffered  and  how 
much  was  due  to  them,  to  refer  the  origin  of  their  good  to 
God  and  to  leave  the  righting  of  their  wrongs  to  God.  .  . 
Being  thus  himself  poor  .  .  .  and  having  in  him  .  .  . 
a  heart  to  love  and  enjoy  all  beauty  and  to  feel  all  that  was  hu- 
man, and  being  insensibly  influenced  by  the  spirit  of  the  time, 
he  threw  into  the  tender  and  humorous  song  the  sorrows  and 
affections  of  his  own  class,  their  religion  and  their  passions, 
their  amusements  and  their  toil,  till  all  the  world  laughed  and 
wept  with  the  Ayrshire  ploughman." — Stopford  Brooke 

"  He  carries  us  into  the  humble  scenes  of  life,  not  to  make 


BURNS  233 

us  dole  out  our  tribute  of  charitable  compassion  to  paupers 
and  cottagers,  but  to  make  us  feel  with  them  on  equal  terms, 
to  make  us  enter  with  them  into  their  passions  and  interests 
and  share  our  hearts  with  them  as  with  brothers  and  sisters  of 
the  same  species." — Thomas  Campbell. 

"But  observe  him  chiefly  as  he  mingles  with  his  brother 
men  !  What  warm,  all-comprehending  fellow-feeling ;  what 
trustful,  boundless  love  ;  that  generous  exaggeration  of  the 
object  loved  !  His  rustic  friend,  his  nut-brown  maiden,  are 
no  longer  mean  and  homely,  but  a  hero  and  a  queen  whom 
he  prizes  as  the  paragons  of  Earth.  .  .  .  And  thus  over 
the  lowest  provinces  of  man's  existence  he  pours  the  glory 
of  his  own  soul.  ...  In  hut  and  in  hall  as  the  heart 
unfolds  itself  in  the  many-colored  joy  and  woe  of  existence, 
the  name,  the  voice  of  that  joy  and  woe  is  the  name  and 
the  voice  which  Burns  has  given  them.  Strictly  speaking, 
perhaps  no  [other]  British  man  has  so  deeply  affected  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  so  many  men  as  this  solitary  and 
altogether  private  individual,  with  means  apparently  the  hum- 
blest. .  .  .  We  see  in  him  the  gentleness,  the  trembling 
pity  of  a  woman,  with  the  deep  earnestness,  the  force  and  pas- 
sionate ardor  of  a  hero.  ...  He  has  a  resonance  in  his 
bosom  for  every  note  of  human  feeling ;  the  high  and  the  low, 
the  sad,  the  ludicrous,  the  joyful,  are  welcome  in  their  turns 
to  his  lightly-moved  and  all-conceiving  spirit." — Carlyle. 

"  What  a  gust  of  sympathy  there  is  in  him,  sometimes  flow- 
ing out  in  by-ways  hitherto  unused,  upon  mice,  flowers,  and 
the  Devil  himself;  sometimes  speaking  plainly  between  hu- 
man hearts;  sometimes  ringing  out  in  exultation  like  a  peal 
of  bells  !  ' ' — Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 

"  But  still  the  music  of  his  song 
Rises  o'  er  all  elate  and  strong ; 

Its  master-chords 
Are  Manhood,  Freedom,  Brotherhood." 

— Longfellow. 


234  BURNS 

"  We  praise  him  not  for  gifts  divine, 

His  muse  was  born  of  woman, 
His  manhood  breathes  in  every  line — 
Was  ever  heart  more  human  ? 

We  love  him,  praise  him,  just  for  this: 

In  every  form  and  feature, 
Through  wealth  and  want,  through  woe  and  bliss, 

He  saw  his  fellow-creature." 

—  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

"  But  who  his  human  heart  has  laid 

To  Nature's  bosom  nearer  ? 
Who  sweetened  toil  like  him,  repaid 
To  love  a  tribute  dearer  ? 

Through  all  his  tuneful  art,  how  strong 

The  human  feeling  gushes  ! 
The  very  moonlight  of  his  song 

Is  warm  with  smiles  and  blushes  !  " — Whittier. 

"  He  is  a  human  creature,  only  overflowing  with  the  char- 
acteristics of  humanity.  To  him  belong,  in  large  measure, 
the  passions  and  the  powers  of  his  race.  He  professes  no 
exemption  from  the  common  lot.  .  .  .  Rarely  and  richly 
were  mingled  in  him  the  elements  of  human  nature.  His 
crowning  distinction  is  a  larger  soul ;  and  this  he  carried  into 
all  things." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Burns  had  as  deep  an  insight  as  ever  man  had  into  the 
moral  evils  of  the  poor  man's  character,  condition,  and  life. 
.  .  .  Not  an  occurrence  in  hamlet,  village,  or  town, 
affecting  in  any  way  the  happiness  of  the  human  heart,  but 
roused  as  keen  an  interest  in  the  soul  of  Burns  and  as  genial  a 
sympathy  as  if  it  had  immediately  concerned  himself  and  his 
own  individual  welfare.  .  .  .  No  poet  ever  lived  more 
constantly  and  more  intimately  in  the  hearts  of  a  people. 
.  .  .  There  is  no  other  writer  except  Shakespeare  who 


BURNS  235 

shares  to  the  same  extent,  notwithstanding  he  wrote  in  a  pro- 
vincial dialect,  a  like  universal  sympathy  or  the  same  uni- 
versal appreciation." — -James  Grant  Wilson. 

"  It  is  that  language  of  the  heart 

In  which  the  answering  heart  would  speak, 
Thought,  word,  that  bids  the  warm  tear  start, 
Or  the  smile  light  the  cheek : 

And  his  that  music  to  whose  tone 

The  common  pulse  of  man  keeps  time, 

In  cot  or  castle's  mirth  or  moan, 

In  cold  or  sunny  clime." — Fitz- Greene  Halleck. 

"  Burns  has  made  his  appearance  to  convince  the  loftiest 
of  the  noble  and  the  daintiest  of  the  learned,  that  wherever 
human  nature  is  at  work,  the  eye  of  the  poet  may  discover 
rich  elements  of  his  art  ;  that  over  Christian  Europe,  at  all 
events,  purity  of  sentiment  and  the  fervor  of  passion  may  be 
combined  with  sagacity  of  intellect,  with  shrewdness,  humor, 
and  whatever  elevates  and  delights  the  mind  ;  not  more  easily 
amidst  the  most  complicated  transactions  of  the  most  polished 
societies  than  in  his  'huts  where  poor  men  lie.'  "— -J.  G. 
Lockhart. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Then  gently  scan  your  brother  man, 

Still  gentler  sister  Woman  ; 
Tho'  they  may  gang  a  kennie  [trifle]  wrang, 

To  step  aside  is  human  : 
One  point  must  still  be  greatly  dark, 

The  moving  Why  they  do  it ; 
And  just  as  lamely  can  ye  mark 

How  far,  perhaps,  they  rue  it. 

Who  made  the  heart,  'tis  He  alone 

Decidedly  can  try  us, 
He  knows  each  chord — its  various  tone, 

Each  spring — its  various  bias  : 


236  BURNS 

Then  at  the  balance  let's  be  mute, 

We  never  can  adjust  it ; 
What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 

But  know  not  what's  resisted." 

— Address  to  the  Unco  Guid. 

"  To  lie  in  kilns  and  barns  at  e'en, 

When  banes  are  crazed  and  bluid  is  thin, 

Is  doubtless  great  distress  ! 
Yet  then  content  could  make  us  blest ; 
E'en  then  sometimes  we'd  snatch  a  taste 

Of  truest  happiness. 
The  honest  heart  that's  free  frae  a' 

Intended  fraud  or  guile, 
However  Fortune  kick  the  ba* 

Has  aye  some  cause  to  smile." 

— Epistle  to  Davis. 

"  I've  noticed,  on  our  Laird's  court-day, 
An'  mony  a  time  my  heart's  been  wae, 
Poor  tenant  bodies,  scant  o'  cash, 
How  they  mon  thole  a  factor's  snash  : 

I  see  how  folks  live  that  hae  riches ; 

But  surely  poor  folks  maun  be  wretches." 

—  The  Twa  Dogs. 

6.  Scorn— Indignation— Ridicule. — This  most  pow- 
erful weapon  in  the  hands  of  Burns  was  generally  directed 
against  the  cant  and  hypocrisy  which  his  honest  eyes  saw  too 
clearly  in  all  the  ways  of  men  and  especially  against  hypocrisy 
in  religion. 

"  The  indignation  which  makes  verses,  is,  properly  speak- 
ing, an  inverted  love  ;  the  love  of  some  right,  some  worth, 
some  goodness,  belonging  to  ourselves  or  others,  which  has 
been  injured  and  which  this  tempestuous  feeling  issues  forth 
to  defend  and  avenge.  ...  Of  the  verses  which  indig- 
nation makes,  Burns  has  given  us  among  the  best  that  were 
ever  given." — Carlyle. 


BURNS  237 

"  Since  Voltaire,  no  literary  man  in  religious  matters  was 
more  bitter  or  more  jocose.  .  .  .  What  he  made  fun  of 
was  official  worship;  but  as  for  religion,  the  language  of  the 
soul,  he  was  greatly  attached  to  it." — Taine. 

"  But  never  since  bright  earth  was  born 
In  rapture  of  the  enkindling  morn, 
Might  god-like  wrath  and  sinlike  scorn, 

That  was  and  is 

And  shall  be  while  false  weeds  are  worn, 
Find  words  like  his." 

— A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  Not  Latimer  nor  Luther  struck  more  telling  blows  against 
false  theology  than  did  this  brave  singer.  .  .  .  His  satire 
has  lost  none  of  its  edge.  His  musical  arrows  yet  sing  through 
the  air." — Emerson. 

"  The  first  peculiarity  is  the  undisciplined  harshness  and 
acrimony  of  his  invective.  .  .  .  His  epigrams  and  lam- 
poons appear  to  us,  one  and  all,  unworthy  of  him,  offensive 
from  their  extreme  coarseness  and  violence,  and  contemptible 
from  their  want  of  wit  and  brilliancy.  They  seem  to  have 
been  written  not  out  of  fierce  and  ungovernable  anger.  His 
whole  raillery  consists  in  railing ;  and  his  satirical  vein  dis- 
plays itself  chiefly  in  calling  names  and  swearing.  We  say 
this  mainly  with  reference  to  his  personalities.  In  many  of 
his  more  general  representations  of  life  and  manners,  there  is 
no  doubt  much  that  may  be  called  satirical,  mixed  up  with 
admirable  humor  and  description  of  inimitable  vivacity." — 
Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  Insincerity  and  pretension  completely  disgusted  him. 
Scarcely  does  he  betray  the  slightest  impatience  with  his  fel- 
lows, except  in  expressing  and  ridiculing  these  traits.  '  Holy 
Willie's  Prayer  '  and  a  few  similar  effusions  were  penned  as 
protests  against  bigotry  and  presumption." — H.  T.  Tucker- 
man. 

"  The  vigor  of  his  satire,  the  severity  of  illustration  with 


238  BURNS 

which  his  fancy  instantly  supplied  him,  bore  down  all  retort.'' 
—Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  Burns  possessed  great  force  as  a  satirist,  for  a  satirist  of 
the  most  pungent  order  unquestionably  he  was — too  much,  in 
fact,  for  his  own  peaceable  march  through  life,  .  .  .  but 
not  too  much  for  public  correction  and  reproof  when,  as  in 
the  case  of  <  Holy  Willie  '  and  <  The  Holy  Fair,'  the  lash  was 
wisely  and  effectively  wielded.  ...  In  connection  with 
his  power  of  seizing  the  striking  features  of  character,  must  be 
mentioned  his  tremendous  force  as  a  satirist."— -John  Stuart 
Blackie. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Hear  how  he  clears  the  points  o'  faith 

Wi'  rattlin'  an'  wi'  thumpin' ! 
Now  meekly  calm,  now  wild  in  wrath, 

He's  stampin'  and  he's  jumpin' ! 
His  lengthened  chin,  his  turned  up  snout, 

His  eldritch  [unearthly]  squeal  an*  gestures, 
O  how  they  fire  the  heart  devout, 
Like  cantharidian  plasters, 
On  sic  a  day  ! 

A  vast,  unbottomed,  boundless  pit, 

FilPd  fou  [full]  o'  lowin  [flaming]  brunstane  [brimstone], 
Wha's  raging  flame  an'  scorching  heat, 

Wad  melt  the  hardest  whunstane  [whinstone] ! 
The  half  asleep  start  up  wi'  fear, 

An'  think  they  hear  it  roarin', 
When  presently  it  does  appear 

'Twas  but  some  neebor  snorin', 
Asleep  that  day. 

How  monie  hearts  this  day  converts 

O'  sinners  an*  o'  lasses  ! 
Their  hearts  o'  stane,  gin  night,  are  gane 

As  saft  as  on'y  flesh  is. 
There's  some  are  fou  o'  love  divine, 

There's  some  are  fou  o'  brandy,"  &c. —  The  Holy  Fair. 


BURNS  239 

"  When  frae  my  mither's  womb  I  fell, 
Thou  might  hae  plunged  me  into  Hell, 
To  gnash  my  gums,  to  weep  and  wail, 

In  burnin*  lake, 

Where  damned  devils  roar  and  yell, 
Chain'd  to  a  stake." 

— Holy  Willie's  Prayer. 


"  He  fine  a  mangy  sheep  could  scrub 


Or  nobly  fling  the  gospel  club, 

And  New-light  herds  could  nicely  drub, 

Or  pay  their  skin  ; 
Could  shake  them  ower  the  burning  dub  [pit] 

Or  heave  them  in." — The  Twa  Herds. 

7.  Picturesqueness— Descriptive    Power. —  "No 

poet  of  any  age  or  nation  is  more  graphic  than  Burns :  the 
characteristic  features  disclose  themselves  to  him  at  a  glance. 
Three  lines  from  his  hand,  and  we  have  a  likeness.  And  in 
that  rough  dialect,  in  that  rude,  often  awkward  metre,  so  clear 
and  definite  a  likeness  !  It  seems  a  draughtsman  working 
with  a  burnt  stick ;  and  yet  the  burning  of  a  Retzch  is  not 
more  expressive  or  exact.  .  .  .  It  is  reverence,  it  is  love 
towards  all  Nature  that  inspires  him,  that  opens  his  eyes  to  its 
beauty,  and  makes  heart  and  voice  eloquent  in  its  praise." 
—  Carlyle. 

"  For  all  aspects  of  the  natural  world  he  has  the  same  clear 
eye,  the  same  open  heart  that  he  has  for  man.  His  love  of 
nature  is  intense,  but  very  simple  and  direct ;  no  subtilizings 
nor  refinings  about  it,  nor  any  of  that  nature-worship  which 
soon  after  his  time  came  in.  .  .  .  Everywhere  in  his 
poetry  nature  comes  in,  not  so  much  as  a  being  indepen- 
dent of  man  but  as  the  background  of  his  pictures  of  life 
and  human  character.  ...  In  '  Halloween '  he  has 
sketched  the  Ayrshire  peasantry  as  they  appeared  in  their 
hours  of  merriment — painted  with  a  few  vivid  strokes  a  dozen 
distinct  pictures  of  country  lads  and  lasses,  sires  and  dames, 


240  BURNS 

and  at  the  same  time  preserved  forever  the  remembrance  of 
the  antique  customs  and  superstitious  observances,  which, 
even  in  Burns's  day,  were  beginning  to  fade,  and  have  now 
all  but  disappeared.  .  .  .  How  true  his  perceptions  of 
her  [Nature's]  features  are,  how  pure  and  transparent  the 
feelings  she  awakens  in  him!  .  .  .  Scottish  Lowland 
scenery  is  never  so  truly  and  vividly  described  as  when  Burns 
uses  his  own  vernacular.  .  .  .  Everywhere  with  him 
man,  his  feelings  and  his  fate,  stand  out  in  the  front  of  his 
pictures,  and  Nature  comes  in  as  the  delightful  background 
—yet  Nature  loved  with  a  love,  beheld  with  a  rapture,  all  the 
more  genuine  because  his  pulses  throbbed  in  such  intense 
sympathy  with  man.  Every  reader  can  recall  many  a  won- 
derful line,  sometimes  a  whole  verse  in  his  love-songs,  in  which 
the  surrounding  landscape  is  flashed  on  the  mind's  eye." 
— ; /.  C.  Shairp. 

"  He  has  in  all  his  compositions  great  force  of  conception 
and  great  spirit  and  animation  in  its  expression.     He  has 
taken  a  large  range  through  the  region  of  Fancy,  and  natu- 
ralized himself  in  almost  all  her  climates.     He  has     . 
great  powers  of  description.     There  is  another  fragment,  also, 
called  '  Vision,'  which  belongs  to  a  higher  order  of  poetry. 
If  Burns   had    never  written   anything   else,    the   power   of 
description  and  the  vigor  of  the  whole  composition  would 
have    entitled    him    to   the   remembrance   of    posterity."  - 
Francis  Jeffrey. 

11  Touched  by  his  hand,  the  way -side  weed 
Becomes  a  flower  ;  the  lowliest  reed 

Beside  the  stream 

Is  clothed  with  beauty  ;  gorse  and  grass 
And  heather,  where  his  footsteps  pass, 

The  brighter  seem." — Longfellow. 

"  The  dialect  of  Burns  was  fitted  to  deal  with  any  subject ; 
and  whether  it  was  a  stormy  night,  a  shepherd's  collie,  a 
sheep  struggling  in  the  snow,  the  conduct  of  cowardly 


BURNS  241 

soldiers  in  the  field,  the  gait  and  cogitations  of  a  drunken 
man,  or  only  a  village  cock-crow  in  the  morning,  he  could 
find  language  to  give  it  freshness,  body,  and  relief." — Robert 
Louis  Stevenson. 

"  He  could  describe  with  admirable  fidelity  and  force  inci- 
dents, scenes,  manners,  characters,  or  whatever  else,  which  had 
fallen  within  his  experience  or  observation." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  His  page  is  a  lively  image  of  the  contemporary  life  and 
country  from  which  he  sprung." — Thomas  Campbell. 

"But  within  the  range,  it  [his  description]  is  perfect;  it 
is  never  exaggerated,  nothing  is  forced  or  over-dwelt  on  ;  it  is 
the  natural  and  swift  reproduction  of  the  landscape,  and  all 
that  is  said  sounds  sweetly  and  smells  sweetly  to  the  sense." 
—Stopford  Brooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Admiring  Nature  in  her  wildest  grace 
These  northern  scenes  with  weary  feet  I  trace ; 
O'er  many  a  winding  dale  and  painful  steep, 
Th'  abodes  of  covered  grouse  and  timid  sheep, 
My  savage  journey,  curious,  I  pursue. 
Till  famed  Breadalbane  opens  to  my  view — 
The  meeting  cliffs  each  deep-sunk  glen  divides, 
The  woods,  wild-scattered,  clothe  their  ample  sides ; 
Th'  outstretching  lake  embosomed  'mong  the  hills, 
The  eye  with  wonder  and  amazement  fills  ; 
The  Tay  meandering  sweet  in  infant  pride, 
The  palace  rising  on  its  verdant  side  ; 
The  lawns  wood-fringed  in  Nature's  native  taste, 
The  hillocks  dropt  in  Nature's  careless  haste  ; 
The  arches  striding  o'er  the  new-born  stream  ; 
The  village  glittering  in  the  noontide  beam  ! " 

—  Written  with  a  Pencil,  Etc. 

"  November  chill  blaws  loud  wi*  angry  sugh ; 

The  shortening  winter  day  is  near  a  close ; 
The  miry  beasts  retreating  frae  the  plugh ; 
The  black'ning  trains  o'  craws  to  their  repose 
16 


242  BURNS 

The  toil-worn  cotter  frae  his  labour  goes, 
This  night  his  weekly  moil  is  at  an  end, 

Collects  his  spades,  his  mattocks,  and  his  hoes, 
Hoping  the  morn  in  ease  and  rest  to  spend  ! " 

—  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night. 

"  Upon  a  summer  Sunday  morn, 

When  Nature's  face  is  fair, 
I  walked  forth  to  view  the  corn, 

And  snuff  the  cooler  air. 
The  risin'  sun  o'er  Galston  muirs 
Wi'  glorious  light  was  glintin  ; 
The  hares  were  hirplin  down  the  furs, 
The  lav'rocks  they  were  chantin." 

— Fu'  Sweet  That  Day. 

8.  Kindly  Humor — Sportiveness. — Unlike  most  writ- 
ers, Burns  has  equal  command  of  both  extremes  of  satire — 
of  the  kind  that  stings  (already  noticed)  and  the  kind  that 
excites  only  a  good-natured  smile. 

"Under  a  lighter  characteristic,  the  same  principle  of 
love,  which  we  have  recognized  as  the  great  characteristic  of 
Burns,  and  of  all  true  poets,  occasionally  manifests  itself  in  the 
shape  of  humor.  Everywhere,  indeed,  in  his  sunny  moods,  a 
full  buoyant  flood  of  mirth  rolls  through  the  mind  of  Burns  ; 
he  rises  to  the  high  and  stoops  to  the  low,  and  is  brother  and 
playmate  to  all  caricature;  for  this  is  drollery  rather  than 
humor ;  but  a  much  tenderer  sportfulness  dwells  in  him,  and 
comes  forth,  here  and  there,  in  evanescent  and  beautiful 
touches.  ...  As  in  his  'Address  to  the  Mouse,'  or 
the  'Farmer's  Mare,'  or  in  his  'Elegy  on  Poor  Mailie,' 
which  last  may  be  reckoned  as  his  happiest  effort  of  this 
kind.  In  these  pieces  there  are  traits  of  a  humor  as  fine  as 
that  of  Sterne ;  yet  altogether  different,  original,  peculiar 
— the  humor  of  Burns." — Carlyle. 

"He  has  genuine  gaiety,  a  glow  of  jocularity  ;  laughter 
commends  itself  to  him  ;  he  praises  it  as  well  as  good  suppers 


BURNS  243 

of  good  comrades,  where  wine  is  plentiful,  pleasantry  abounds, 
ideas  pour  forth,  poetry  sparkles,  and  causes  a  carnival  of 
beautiful  figures  and  good-humored  people  to  move  about  in 
the  human  brain." — Taine. 

11  It  was  in  the  humorous,  the  comic,  the  satirical,  that  he 
first  tried  and  proved  his  strength.  Exulting  to  find  that  a 
rush  of  words  was  ready  at  his  will — that  no  sooner  flashed 
his  fancies  than  on  the  instant  they  were  embodied,  he  wan- 
toned and  revelled  among  the  subjects  that  had  always  seemed 
to  him  the  most  risible,  whatever  the  kind  of  laughter,  simple 
or  compound — pure  mirth  or  a  mixture  of  mirth  and  con- 
tempt, even  of  indignation  and  scorn — mirth  still  being  the 
chief  ingredient  that  qualifies  the  whole." — Professor  Wilson. 

"  Where  is  the  wooing-match  that  for  pointed  humor  and 
drollery  can  compare  with  that  of  Duncan  Gray,  when  *  Meg 
was  deaf  as  Culsa  Craig,'  and  Duncan  '  spak  o'  lowpin  o'er 
him  '  ?  These  are  lines  that  for  happy  humor  none  but  Burns 
could  have  hit  off." — -J.  C.  Shairp. 

"  His  humor  comes  from  him  in  a  stream  so  deep  and  easy 
that  I  will  venture  to  call  him  the  best  of  humorous  poets." 
— Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 

"  Such  a  collection  of  humorous  lyrics,  connected  by  vivid 
poetical  descriptions,  is  not  perhaps  to  be  paralleled  in  the 
English  language." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  One  notable  feature  in  his  genius — a  feature  which  has 
not  seldom  been  wanting  in  the  greatest  of  minds — is  humor, 
a  certain  sportive  fence  of  the  soul  delighting  in  the  significant 
conjunction  of  contraries,  a  quality  peculiarly  Scotch,  and 
which  in  Scotchmen  seems  a  counterpoise  graciously  provided 
by  Nature  to  that  overcharge  of  thought — fulness  and  serious- 
ness, which  so  strikingly  contrasts  them  with  their  Hibernian 
cousins  across  the  channel." — -John  Stuart  Blackie. 


244  BURNS 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  For  Lords  or  Kings  I  dinna  mourn, 
E'en  let  them  die — for  that  they're  born : 
But  oh  !  prodigious  to  reflec' ! 

A  Towmont  [Twelvemonth],  Sirs,  is  gane  to  wreck  I 
O  Eighty-eight,  in  thy  sma'  space 
What  dire  events  hae  taken  place  ! 
Of  what  enjoyments  thou  hast  reft  us  ! 
In  what  a  pickle  thou  hast  left  us ! 
The  Spanish  empire's  tint  [lost]  a  head, 
And  my  auld  teethless  Bawtie's  dead  ! 
The  tulzie's  [quarrel]  sair  'tween  Pitt  an'  Fox, 
An'  'tween  our  Maggie's  twa  wee  cocks." 

—Elegy  on  the  Year  1788. 

"  As  ye  gae  up  by  yon  hillside, 
Speer  in  for  bonny  Bessy, 
She'll  gae  ye  a  beck,  and  bid  ye  licht, 
And  handsomely  address  ye. 
There's  few  sae  bonnie,  nane  sae  guid, 
In  a*  king  George's  dominion  ; 
If  ye  should  doubt  the  truth  of  this — 
It's  Bessy's  ain  opinion." — The  Tarbolton  Lasses. 

"  I  wadna  been  surprised  to  spy 
You  on  an  auld  wife's  flainen  toy  [flannel  cap]  : 
Or  aiblins  some  bit  duddie  boy, 

On's  wyliecoat  [flannel  waistcoat] ; 
But  Miss's  fine  Lunardi !  fie  ! 

How  dare  ye  do  't  ?  " 

—  To  a  Louse  on  a  Lady's  Bonnet. 

Q.  Warmth  of  Affection.—"  He  is  a  man  of  the  most 
impassioned  temper ;  with  passions  not  strong  only  but  noble, 
and  of  the  sort  in  which  great  virtues  and  great  poems  take 
their  rise.  .  .  .  What  warm,  all-comprehending  fellow- 
feeling  ;  what  trustful,  boundless  love ;  what  generous  exag- 
geration of  the  object  loved  !  His  rustic  friend,  his  nut- 


BURNS  245 

brown  maiden,  are  no  longer  mean  and  homely,  but  a  hero 
and  a  queen,  whom  he  prizes  as  the  paragons  of  the  earth. 
.  .  .  Poetry  is  indeed  his  companion,  but  Love  also,  and 
Courage ;  the  simple  feelings,  the  worth,  the  nobleness,  that 
dwell  under  the  straw  roof,  are  dear  and  venerable  to  his 
heart.  .  .  .  And  so  kind  and  warm  a  soul ;  so  full  of  in- 
born riches,  of  love  to  all  living  and  lifeless  things." — Carlyle. 
"  The  earliest  poem  he  composed  was  in  his  seventeenth 
summer;  a  simple  love-song  in  praise  of  a  girl  who  was  his 
companion  in  the  harvest  field.  The  last  strain  he  breathed  was 
from  his  death-bed  in  remembrance  of  some  former  affection. 
.  .  .  He  had  a  compassionate  sympathy  for  the  old  name- 
less song-makers  of  his  country,  lying  in  their  unknown  graves, 
all  Scotland  over.  .  .  .  And  then  his  humanity  was  not 
confined  to  man,  it  overflowed  to  his  lower  fellow-creatures. 
His  lines  about  the  pet  ewe,  the  worn-out  mare,  the  field- 
mouse,  the  wounded  hare,  have  long  been  household  words. 
Observe  the  peculiar  intensity  of  his  nature,  the  fervid  heart, 
the  trembling  sensibility,  the  headlong  passion,  all  thrilling 
through  an  intellect  strong  and  keen  beyond  that  of  other 
men."—/.  C.  Shairp. 

"  He  was  always  in  love.     He  made  love  the  great  end  of 
existence  to  such  a  degree,  that  at  the  club  which  he  founded 
every  member  was  obliged  to  be  the  declared  lover 
of  one  or  more  fair  ones." — Tame. 

"  He  sings  of  love,  whose  flame  illumines 
The  darkness  of  lone  cottage  rooms : 

He  feels  the  force, 

The  treacherous  undertone  and  stress, 
Of  wayward  passions,  and  no  less 

The  keen  remorse." — Longfellow. 

"It  is  true  that  his  love  of  Nature  was  always  linked  with 
some  vehement  or  some  sweet  affection  for  living  creatures,  and 
that  it  was  for  the  sake  of  the  humanity  that  she  cherishes  in  her 
bosom  that  she  was  dear  to  him  as  his  own  life  blood. 


246  BURNS 

In  nothing  else  is  the  sincerity  of  his  soul  more  apparent  than 
in  his  friendships  ;  all  who  had  ever  been  kind  to  him  he 
loved  to  the  last.  .  .  .  Ay,  for  many  a  deep  reason  the 
Scottish  people  love  their  own  Robert  Burns.  Never  was  the 
personal  character  of  a  poet  so  strongly  and  endearingly  ex- 
hibited in  his  song.  They  love  him  because  he  loved  his 
own  order,  nor  ever  desired  for  a  single  moment  to  quit  it. 
They  love  him  because  he  loved  the  very  humblest  condition 
of  humanity,  where  everything  good  was  only  the  more  com- 
mended to  his  manly  mind  by  disadvantages  of  social  posi- 
tion."— Professor  Wilson  [Christopher  North]. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  day  returns,  my  bosom  burns, 
The  blissful  day  we  twa  did  meet, 
Tho'  winter  wild  in  tempest  toil'd, 
Ne'er  summer  sun  was  half  sae  sweet. 
Than  a'  the  pride  that  loads  the  tide, 
And  crosses  o'er  the  sultry  line  ; 
Than  kingly  robes,  than  crowns  and  globes  ; — 
Heaven  gave  me  more,  it  made  thee  mine." 

—  The  Blissful  Day. 

"  All  hail,  ye  tender  feelings  dear  ! 
The  smile  of  love,  the  friendly  tear, 
The  sympathetic  glow  ! 
Long  since,  this  world's  thorny  ways 
Had  number'd  out  my  weary  days, 
Had  it  not  been  for  you  ! 
Fate  still  has  blest  me  with  a  friend, 
In  every  care  and  ill." — Epistle  to  Da-vie. 

"  But  round  my  heart  the  ties  are  bound, 
That  heart  transpierc'd  with  many  a  wound: 
These  bleed  afresh,  those  ties  I  tear, 
To  leave  the  bonny  banks  of  Ayr. 


BURNS  247 

Farewell,  my  friends  !     Farewell,  my  foes  ! 
My  peace  with  these,  my  love  with  those — 
The  bursting  tears  my  heart  declare ; 
Farewell,  the  bonny  banks  of  Ayr." 

—  The  Author's  Farewell  to  His  Native  Country. 


^.  Conviviality  —  Coarseness  —  Sensuality.  — 

Those  critics  who  are  disposed  to  ''cast  the  first  stone"  at 
Burns  find,  alas  !  abundant  justification  in  his  poems.  Those 
who,  like  Burns,  are  disposed  to  "  gently  scan  your  brother 
man,"  will  exclaim  with  Principal  Shairp  :  "  How  mysterious 
to  reflect  that  the  same  qualities  on  their  emotional  side  made 
him  the  great  songster  of  the  world,  and  on  their  practical 
side  drove  him  to  ruin!"  All  Burns's  critics  agree  that 
much  of  the  coarseness  in  the  poet's  writing  is  due  to  the  un- 
fortunate influence  of  that  coterie  of  "heavy  country  wits  " 
in  the  village  of  Mauchline  who  admitted  Burns  to  their 
choice  circle  and  thus  gave  him  his  first  "rise  in  the  world." 
Prior  to  the  time  of  his  entrance  into  this  circle,  there  was 
little  in  Burns's  verses  to  call  for  reproach.  The  applause  and 
the  stimulus  of  these  cronies  must  be  recognized  as  the  cause 
of  much  of  what  we  most  regret  in  the  poet's  life  and  work. 
Illustrations  of  this  quality  of  Burns  are  too  plentiful  to  need 
citing.  His  two  masterpieces,  "The  Jolly  Beggars"  and 
"  Tarn  o'  Shanter,"  afford  abundant  specimens. 

"  The  poems  and  even  some  of  the  songs  of  Burns  are  not 
free  from  grossness,  which  he  himself  regretted  to  the  last. 
.  .  .  In  '  The  Jolly  Beggars, '  the  materials  are 

so  coarse  and  the  sentiment  so  gross  as  to  make  it,  for  all  its 
dramatic  power,  offensive."—;/.  C.  Shairp. 

"The  leading  vice  in  Burns's  character,  and  the  cardi- 
nal deformity,  indeed,  of  all  his  productions,  was  his  con- 
tempt, or  affectation  of  contempt,  for  prudence,  decency, 
and  regularity.  .  .  .  This  is  the  very  slang  of  the 
worst  German  plays  and  the  lowest  of  our  town-made 


248  BURNS 

novels;  nor  can  anything  be  more  lamentable  than  that  it 
should  have  found  a  patron  in  such  a  man  as  Burns  and  com- 
municated to  many  of  his  productions  a  character  of  immor- 
ality, at  once  contemptible  and  hateful.  .  .  .  It  is  humili- 
ating to  think  how  deeply  Burns  has  fallen  into  this  debasing 
error.  He  is  perpetually  making  a  parade  of  his  thought- 
lessness, inflammability,  and  impudence,  and  talking,  with 
much  complacency  and  exultation,  of  the  offence  he  has  oc- 
casioned to  the  sober  and  correct  part  of  mankind." — Francis 
Jeffrey. 

"  He  carried  conviviality  to  an  excess,  violated  his  own 
principles  of  virtue,  and  grafted  license  upon  love. ' ' — Henry 
Ward  Beecher. 

"  You  [Burns]  combined  in  certain  of  your  letters  a  liber- 
tine theory  with  your  practice,  you  poured  out  in  your  song 
and  raptures  your  shame  and  your  scorn." — Andrew  Lang. 

11  Burns  was  as  free  of  action  as  he  was  of  words;  broad 
jests  crop  up  freely  in  his  verses.  He  calls  himself  an  unre- 
generate  heathen,  and  he  is  right.  ...  It  seems  to  me 
that  by  his  nature  he  was  in  love  with  all  women. 
It  was  the  excess  of  sap  which  overflowed  within  him  and 
soiled  the  bark.  Doubtless  he  did  not  boast  of  these  ex- 
cesses, he  rather  repented  of  them." — Taine. 

"  Burns  could  hardly  have  described  the  excesses  of  mad, 
hairbrained,  roaring  mirth  and  convivial  indulgence,  which 
is  the  soul  of  it,  if  he  himself  had  not  '  drunk  full  oftener  of 
the  tun  than  of  the  well.'  " — William  Hazlitt. 

"To  the  ill-starred  Burns  was  given  the  power  of  making 
man's  life  more  venerable,  but  that  of  wisely  guiding  his  own 
life  was  not  given.  Destiny — for  so  in  our  ignorance  we 
must  speak — his  faults,  the  faults  of  others,  proved  too  hard 
for  him  ;  and  that  spirit  which  might  have  soared,  could  it 
but  have  walked,  soon  sank  to  the  dust,  its  glorious  faculties 
trodden  under  foot  in  the  blossom,  and  died,  we  may  almost 
say,  without  ever  having  lived." — Carlyle. 


BURNS  249 

"  The  magic  of  that  countenance,  making  Burns  at  once 
tempter  and  tempted,  may  explain  many  a  sad  story." — 
Charles  Kmgsley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  No  churchman  am  I  for  to  rail  and  to  write, 
No  statesman  nor  soldier  to  plot  or  to  fight, 
No  sly  man  of  business  contriving  a  snare, 
For  a  big-bellie'd  bottle  's  the  whole  of  my  care. 

The  peer  I  don't  envy,  I  give  him  his  bow ; 
I  scorn  not  the  peasant  though  ever  so  low  ; 
But  a  club  of  good  fellows  like  those  that  are  here, 
And  a  bottle  like  this,  are  my  glory  and  care." 

—  The  Big -Bellied  Bottle. 

"  Let  other  poets  raise  a  fracas 

'Bout  vines  an'  wines,  an'  drunken  Bacchus 
An'  crabbit  names  and  stories  wrack  us, 

An'  grate  our  lug  [earj, 
I  sing  the  juice  Scots  bear  can  mak  us, 

In  glass  or  jug." — Scotch  Drink. 

"  What  is  title  ?  what  is  treasure  ? 

What  is  reputation's  care  ? 
If  we  lead  a  life  of  pleasure, 
'Tis  no  matter  how  or  where  ! 

With  the  ready  trick  and  fable, 

Round  we  wander  all  the  day  ; 
And  at  night  in  barn  or  stable, 

Hug  our  doxies  in  the  hay. 

Does  the  train-attended  carriage 
Through  the  country  lighter  rove  ? 

Does  the  sober  bed  of  marriage 
Witness  brighter  scenes  of  love  ?  " 

—  The  Jolly  Beggars. 

II.  Sublimity.—"  Burns  is  one  of  those  men  who  reach 
down  to  the  perennial  deeps,  who  take  rank  among  the  heroic 
men.  He  was  born  in  a  poor  Ayrshire  hut.  The  largest 


250  BURNS 

soul  of  all  the  British  lands  came  among  us  in  the  shape  of  a 
hard-handed  Scotch  peasant.  .  .  .  The  *  hoar  visage ' 
of  winter  delights  him ;  he  dwells  with  a  sad  and  often-re- 
turning fondness  on  these  scenes  of  solemn  desolation  ;  but 
the  voice  of  the  tempest  becomes  an  anthem  to  his  ears ;  he 
loves  to  walk  in  the  sounding  woods,  for  '  it  raises  his  thoughts 
to  him  that  walketh  on  the  wings  of  the  wind.'  ...  In 
his  abasement,  in  his  extreme  need,  he  forgets  not  for  a.  mo- 
ment the  majesty  of  poetry  and  manhood.  .  .  .  But 
some  beams  from  it  [Burns's  genius]  did,  by  fits,  pierce 
through;  and  it  tinted  those  clouds  with  rainbow  and  orient 
colors  into  a  glory  and  stern  grandeur,  which  men  silently 
gaze  on  with  wonder  and  tears." — Carlyle. 

"  It  ['The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  'J  is  a  noble  and  pathetic 
picture  of  human  manners  mingled  with  a  fine  religious  awe. 
It  comes  over  the  mind  like  a  slow  and  solemn  strain  of 
music.  Repeatedly,  in  Burns's  poems,  we  find  touches  of 
what  the  poet  himself  so  finely  calls  '  the  pathos  and  sub- 
lime of  human  life.'  " — William  Hazlitt. 

"  He  rises  occasionally  into  a  strain  of  beautiful  description 
or  lofty  sentiment,  far  above  the  pitch  of  his  original  concep- 
tion." — Francis  Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  sweeping  blast,  the  sky  o'ercast, 
The  joyless  winter  day, 
Let  others  fear,  to  me  more  dear 
Than  all  the  pride  of  May: 
The  tempest's  howl  it  soothes  my  soul, 
My  griefs  it  seems  to  join: 
The  leafless  trees  my  fancy  please, 
Their  fate  resembles  mine."— Winter. 

"  O  Thou,  great  Governor  of  all  below ! 

If  I  may  dare  a  lifted  eye  to  Thee, 
Thy  nod  can  make  the  tempest  cease  to  blow, 
And  still  the  tumult  of  the  raging  sea: 


BURNS  251 

With  that  controlling  power  assist  even  me 
Those  headlong  furious  passions  to  confine, 

For  all  unfit  I  feel  my  power  to  be 
To  rule  their  torrent  in  the  allowed  line: 
Oh,  aid  me  with  Thy  help,  omnipotence  Divine." 
— Stanzas  on  the  Prospect  of  Death. 

11  Ye  holy  walls  that,  still  sublime, 
Resist  the  crumbling  touch  of  time, 
How  strongly  still  your  form  displays 
The  piety  of  ancient  days  ! 
As  through  your  ruins,  hoar  and  gray- 
Ruins  yet  beauteous  in  decay  — 
The  silvery  moonbeams  trembling  fly, 
The  forms  of  ages  long  gone  by 
Crowd  thick  on  Fancy's  wondering  eye, 
And  wake  the  soul  to  musings  high." 

—  Verses  on  the  Ruins  of  Lincluden  Abbey, 


COWPER,   1731-1800 

Biographical  Outline.  —  William  Cowper,  bom  at 
Great  Berkhampstead,  November  26,  1731  ;  father  a  clergy- 
man and  at  one  time  chaplain  to  George  II. ;  mother  related 
to  the  poet  Donne  and  descended  indirectly  from  Henry  II. ; 
loses  his  mother  at  the  age  of  six,  a  loss  from  which  he  never 
recovered  ;  he  is  exceedingly  timid  and  sensitive  even  as  a 
child ;  soon  after  his  mother's  death  Cowper  is  placed  in  the 
school  of  one  Dr.  Pitman,  in  Market  Street,  Hertfordshire, 
where  he  is  abused  and  bullied  by  the  older  and  stronger 
boys;  he  is  removed  from  Dr.  Pitman's  school  on  account 
of  inflammation  of  the  eyes,  caused,  it  is  said,  by  excessive 
weeping,  and  is  placed  for  two  years  in  the  home  of  an  ocu- 
list;  in  1741  he  is  placed  in  Westminster  School,  where  he 
takes  part  in  athletic  sports  and  is  less  miserable  than  at 
Market  Street ;  he  studies  Latin  at  Westminster  under  Vin- 
cent Bourne,  to  whom  Cowper  becomes  attached  ;  he  be- 
comes a  good  Latin  scholar,  and  reads  the  "  Iliad  "  and  the 
"  Odyssey  "  outside  of  school  hours  with  a  friend  ;  he  has 
Warren  Hastings  as  a  school-mate  at  Westminster  ;  he  writes 
his  first  poem,  an  imitation  of  Phillips's  "  Splendid  Shil- 
ling," and  helps  his  brother  John,  at  Cambridge,  to  trans- 
late the  "  Henriade  "  in  1748,  while  still  at  Westminster  ;  he 
leaves  Westminster  in  1748,  spends  nine  months  at  his  home 
in  Great  Berkhampstead,  and  is  articled,  in  1749,  to  one 
Chapman,  a  London  attorney,  with  whom  he  remains  three 
years,  completing  his  articles  ;  while  in  London  Cowper  fre- 
quently visits  the  home  of  his  uncle,  Ashley  Cowper,  with 
whose  daughter  Theodora  he  falls  in  love,  and  addresses  to 

252 


COWPER  253 

her  many  of  his  early  poems  under  the  name  of  "  Delia ;" 
he  takes  chambers  in  the  Middle  Temple  in  1752,  and  is  called 
to  the  bar  in  1754,  but  never  practices,  having  studied  law 
merely  to  please  his  father ;  he  gives  his  time  to  literature,  and 
becomes  a  member  of  the  "  Nonsense  Club,"  a  group  of 
seven  Westminster  men  interested  in  literature  and  journalism, 
among  whom  were  Bonnell  Thornton,  Coleman,  and  Lloyd ; 
he  associates  also  with  Churchill,  Wilkes,  and  Hogarth;  he 
is  refused  the  hand  of  his  cousin  by  her  father,  though  she 
remains  single  and  faithful  to  Cowper  till  her  death  ;  he 
loses  his  father  in  1752,  but  is  not  much  affected  by  the  loss; 
he  receives  a  small  patrimony  from  his  father  ;  he  secures  a 
position  as  Commissioner  of  Bankrupts,  which  brings  him 
;£6o  per  annum,  and,  in  1759,  removes  to  the  Inner 
Temple  ;  through  the  influence  of  his  cousin,  Major  Cowper, 
Cowper  is  offered  first  the  office  of  Reading  Clerk  and  Clerk 
of  Committees  in  the  House  of  Lords  and  then  that  of  Clerk 
of  the  Journals  ;  Cowper  accepts  both,  successively,  and  fails 
to  appear  in  each  case  because  of  diffidence  as  to  reading  in 
public  and  fear  of  inability  to  pass  the  examination  required 
for  the  second  position ;  he  becomes  exceedingly  nervous 
and  a  victim  to  hypochondria ;  he  convinces  himself  that 
suicide  is  lawful,  and  makes  preparations  to  take  his  life  sev- 
eral times,  but  shrinks  at  the  last  moment ;  he  finally  tries  to 
hang  himself,  and  is  apparently  prevented  only  by  the  break- 
ing of  the  garter  that  he  has  used  for  a  noose ;  he  is  seized 
with  religious  horrors,  and  becomes  so  completely  insane  that 
he  is  placed,  in  1763,  in  the  private  asylum  of  one  Dr. 
Cotton,  at  St.  Albans ;  after  remaining  eighteen  months  in 
the  asylum,  Cowper  is  discharged,  having  been  restored,  as  he 
believed,  through  divine  faith ;  he  celebrates  his  deliverance 
in  the  poem  "The  Happy  Change;  "  he  is  assisted  finan- 
cially by  friends,  and  goes,  in  1765,  to  reside  in  Hunting- 
don, where  he  meets  Mrs.  Unwin,  the  "  Mary  "  of  his 
poems ;  he  maintains  a  servant  and  an  outcast  boy,  both 


254  COWPER 

brought  with  him  from  St.  Albans ;  he  takes  up  his  residence 
with  the  Unwins,  who  care  for  him  tenderly;  after  Mr.  Un- 
win's  death,   in   1767,  he  goes  with  Mrs.  Unwin  to  reside  at 
Olney,  where   Cowper  comes  under  the  influence  of  the  Rev. 
John  Newton  ;  the  religious  life  of  Cowper  and   t  «  Unwins 
is  so  strict  and  regular  that  they  are  called  "  Metric  lists  ;  " 
Cowper  and  Mrs.  Unwin  become  near  neighbors  to  Nc  "ton, 
and  enter  on  "  a  decided  course  of  religious  happiness;  "   at 
Newton's  suggestion  Cowper  begins  the  "  Olney  Hymns;  " 
under  the  ascetic  life  recommended   by  Newton,  aggravated 
by  the  death  of  his  brother,  Cowper  becomes  again  insane  in 
1773,  fancies  himself  rejected  of  Heaven,  etc.,  and  is  slowly 
nursed  back  to  reason  by  Mrs.  Unwin  ;  he  begins  to  domesti- 
cate hares,  and,  at  Mrs.  Unwin's  suggestion,  in  1780,  begins 
to  write   poetry,  as   furnishing  congenial  occupation  for   his 
mind;    Mrs.   Unwin  suggests  the  theme   "The  Progress  of 
Error,"  and  within  the  year  Cowper  writes  the  poem  of  that 
title  together  with  "  Truth,"  "  Table-Talk,"  and   "  Expos- 
tulation ;  "  in   1781  he  meets  Lady  Austen,  who  suggests  to 
him  the  composition  of  "  The  Task,"  which  Cowper  begins  in 
1783  and  publishes  in  1785  ;   "  The  Task  "  is  successful  and 
wins    public    recognition;    after    completing   "The  Task" 
he  writes  "  The  Loss  of  the  Royal  George,"  "  The  Solitude  of 
Alexander  Selkirk,"    "The    Poplar    Field,"    "The  Shrub- 
bery,"   "The   Needless    Alarm,"    etc.;    in   1784,   at  Lady 
Austen's  suggestion,  Cowper  begins  his  translation  of  Homer, 
which  he  publishes  in  1791  ;  he  hears  the  story  of  "John 
Gilpin  "   from   Lady  Austen  while  winding  her  thread,  and 
writes  the  ballad  at  a  single  sitting ;  he  becomes  estranged 
from  Lady  Austen  in   1785  through  her  dislike  of  a  certain 
"  lecture  "  in  one  of  Cowper's  letters  ;    he  becomes  again 
insane  in  1791  and  again  attempts  suicide;    Lady  Austen's 
place  is  supplied  by  Cowper's  cousin,  Lady  Hesketh  ;  Cow- 
per's health   becomes  shattered  by  recourse  to  medical  em- 
piricism ;  he  removes,  in   1786,  with  Mrs.  Unwin,  to  Wes- 


COWPER  255 

ton  ;  Mrs.  Unwin's  faculties  become  affected,  and  both  are 
received  into  the  home  of  the  poet  Hay  ley  at  Eartham  ;  they 
soon  return  to  Weston,  where  Cowper  becomes  again  insane 
and  again  attempts  suicide  ;  Hayley  and  other  friends  remove 
them  to  Mundsley,  in  Norfolk,  thence  to  Dunham  Lodge, 
near  S  waff  ham,  and  finally  to  East  Dereham,  where  Mrs.  Un- 
win  dies  in  1799  ;  soon  afterward  Cowper  recovers  his  facul- 
ties sufficiently  to  write  "  The  Castaway,"  then  sinks  into  a 
state  of  utter  dejection,  and  dies  at  East  Dereham,  April  27, 
1800. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  CRITICISM  ON   COWPER. 

Sainte-Beuve,  C.    A.,   "  English    Portraits."     New   York,  1875,  Holt, 

164-238. 
Stephen,  L.,  "Hours  in  a   Library."     New  York,  1894,    Putnam,  3: 

208-241. 
Cheever,  G.  B.,  "  Lectures  on  the  Life,  etc.,  of  Cowper."     New  York, 

1856,  R.  Carter,  v.  index. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Res  Judicata:."     New  York,  1892,  Scribner,  81-114. 
Hazlitt,  W.,  "Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,   1884,   Bell, 

H3-I3I. 
Gosse,  E.,   "A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature."     London, 

1889,  Macmillan,  325. 
Masson,    D.,    "In  the  Footsteps  of   the    Poets."     New  York,    1893, 

Whittaker,  125-169. 
Rossetti,  W.,  "  Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,  1878,  Moxon,  177- 

188. 
Sainte-Beuve,    C.    A.,  "  Causeries  de   Lundi."     Paris,    1850,   Graniere 

Freres,  11  :    139-197. 
Woodberry,  G.  E.,  "Studies  in  Literature."     Boston,  1891,  Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  219-227. 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "  Miscellaneous  Works."     New  York,  1880,  Harper, 

I  :  478-480  and  3:  155. 
Howitt,  Wm.,    "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British   Poets."     New  York, 

1847,  Harper,  442-468. 

Smith,  Goldwin,  "English   Men  of  Letters."     New  York,  1880,  Har- 
per, v.  index. 


2$6  COWPER 

Oliphant,    Mrs.,    "Literary  History  of  England."     New  York,    1889, 

Macmillan,  I  :   13-82. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 379-385 . 
McMahon,  A.  B.,  "  Best  Letters  of  Cowper."  Chicago,  1893,  McClurg, 

v.  index. 

Wright,  T.,  "  Life  of  Cowper."     London,  1892,  Unwin,  v.  index. 
Cowper,  W.,  Poems,  with  Life,  by  Chalmers,"  London,  1870. 
Reed,  H.,  "British   Poets."     Philadelphia,    1857,  Parry  &   Macmillan, 

I  :   321-328. 
Taine,  H.  A.,  "A  History  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1875, 

3:  62-67. 

Ward,  T.  H.,  "  English  Poets."    New  York,  1881,  Macmillan,  3  :  62-67. 
Cowper,  W. ,  "Private  Correspondence."    London,  1824,  H.  Colburn,  2 

vols.,  217-225. 
Dawson,   G.,  "Biographical  Lectures."     London,  Kegan  Paul,  French 

&  Co.,  1880,  217-224 
Browning,  Mrs.   E.   B.,    "Poetical  Works."     New  York,  1862,  Miller, 

73-74- 

Southey,  R.,  "  Life  of  Cowper. "     London,  1853,  Bohu,  v.  index. 

Brooke,  S.  A.,  "Theology  in  the  English  Poets."     New  York,  1875. 

Tuckerman,  H.  T.,  "Thoughts  on  the  Poets."     New  York,  1851. 

Haley,    W.,  "The  Life  and  Posthumous  Writings  of  Cowper."     Lon- 
don, 1886,  J.  Seagrave,  2  vols.,  v.  index. 

Canadian  Monthly,  4:   213-220  (Goldwin  Smith). 

Chautauquan,  15  :   402-407  (J.  V.  Cheney). 

Nation,  39:   57-58  (G.  E.  Woodberry). 

North  American  Review,  44  :  29-55  (E.  T.  Channing^). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

/I.  Minute  Descriptive  Power.— "It  is  these  indoor 
scenes,  this  common  world,  this  '  gentle  round  of  calm  de- 
lights,' the  petty  detail  of  quiet  relaxation,  that  Cowper  ex- 
cels in.  The  post-boy,  the  winter's  evening,  the  newspaper, 
the  knitting  needles,  the  stockings,  these  are  his  subjects. 
These  sketches  have  the  highest  merit,  suitableness  of  style." 
—  Walter  JSagehot. 


COWPER  257 

"  The  pleasures  of  the  country  and  of  home,  the  walk,  the 
garden,  but  above  all  the  '  intimate  delights  '  of  the  winter 
evening,  the  snug  parlor,  with  its  close-drawn  curtains  shut- 
ting out  the  stormy  night,  the  steaming  and  bubbling  tea- 
urn,  the  cheerful  circle,  the  book  read  aloud,  the  newspaper, 
through  which  we  look  out  into  the  unquiet  world,  are 
painted  by  the  writer  with  a  heartfelt  enjoyment  which  in- 
fects the  reader." — Goldwin  Smith. 

"  The  very  foundation  of  his  poetry  is  his  close  observation 
of  men  and  things;  the  close  observation  that  fills  his  letters 
with  happily  touched  incidents  of  village  life,  with  characters 
sketched  in  a  sentence,  furnishes  the  groundwork  of  '  The 
Task '  and  the  Satires.  The  snow-covered  fields,  the  wagon 
toiling  through  the  drifts,  the  distant  plough  slow-moving, 
the  garden,  the  fireside,  the  gypsies,  the  village  thief,  the 
clerical  coxcomb,  of  all  these  he  gives  not  only  finished  pict- 
ures but  pictures  finished  in  the  presence  of  the  object  and 
not  in  the  studio."— T.  H.  Ward. 

"  Cowper  possessed  in  a  high  degree  the  art  of  noting  par- 
ticular traits  and  curious  details  of  things  ;  he  was  almost 
minutely  exact.  .  .  .  In  his  '  Winter  Walk  at  Noon  '  he 
produced  an  exquisitely  painted  picture  and  one  that  was 
finished,  living,  and  natural." — Sainte-Beuve . 

"  Impressions  small  to  us  were  great  to  him  ;  and  in  a 
room,  a  garden,  he  found  the  world.  ...  He  discovers 
a  beauty  and  harmony  in  the  coals  of  a  sparkling  fire,  in  the 
movement  of  fingers  over  a  piece  of  wool-work.  .  .  . 
Nature  is  to  him  like  a  gallery  of  splendid  and  various 
pictures,  which  to  us  ordinary  folk  are  always  covered  up 
with  cloths.  Such  is  the  new  truth  which  Cowper's  poems 
brought  to  light.  .  .  .  We  may  find  poetry,  if  we  wish, 
at  our  fireside  and  among  the  beds  of  our  kitchen  garden." 
— Taint. 


258  COWPER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Now  roves  the  eye, 
And,  posted  on  this  speculative  height, 
Exults  in  its  command.     The  sheepfold  here 
Pours  out  its  fleecy  tenants  o'er  the  glebe. 
At  first,  progressive  as  a  stream,  they  seek 
The  middle  field  ;  but,  scatter'd  by  degrees, 
Each  to  his  choice,  soon  whiten  all  the  land. 
There  from  the  sun-burnt  hayfield  homeward  creeps 
The  loaded  wain  ;  while,  lighten'd  of  its  charge, 
The  wain  that  meets  it  passes  swiftly  by, 
The  boorish  driver  leaning  o'er  his  team, 
Vociferous,  impatient  of  delay. 
Nor  less  attractive  is  the  woodland  scene, 
Diversified  with  trees  of  every  growth, 
Alike  yet  various.     Here  the  gray,  smooth  trunks 
Of  ash  or  lime  or  beech  distinctly  shine 
Within  the  twilight  of  their  distant  shades ; 
There,  lost  behind  a  rising  ground,  the  wood 
Seems  sunk  and  shorten'd  to  its  topmost  boughs." 

—  The  Task. 

"  Now  stir  the  fire,  and  close  the  shutters  fast, 
Let  fall  the  curtains,  wheel  the  sofa  round, 
And,  while  the  bubbling  and  loud-hissing  urn 
Throws  up  a  steamy  column,  and  the  cups 
That  cheer  but  not  inebriate  wait  on  each, 
So  let  us  welcome  peaceful  evening  in. 

But  here  the  needle  plies  its  busy  task, 

The  pattern  grows,  the  well-depicted  flower, 

Wrought  patiently  into  the  snowy  lawn, 

Unfolds  its  bosom  ;  buds  and  leaves  and  sprigs 

And  curling  tendrils,  gracefully  disposed, 

Follow  the  nimble  fingers  of  the  fair  ; 

A  wreath  that  cannot  fade,  of  flowers  that  blow 

With  most  success  when  all  besides  decay." — The   Task. 


COWPER  259 

"  The  verdure  of  the  plain  lies  buried  deep 
Beneath  the  dazzling  deluge ;  and  the  bents 
And  coarser  grass,  upspearing  o'er  the  rest, 
Of  late  unsightly  and  unseen,  now  shine 
Conspicuous  and  in  bright  apparel  clad, 
And,  fledged  with  icy  feathers,  nod  superb. 
The  cattle  mourn  in  corners,  where  the  fence 
Screens  them,  and  seem  half  petrified  to  sleep 
In  unrecumbent  sadness.     There  they  wait 
Their  wonted  fodder  ;  not  like  hungering  man 
Fretful  if  unsupplied  ;  but  silent,  meek, 
And  patient  of  the  slow-paced  swain's  delay. 
He  from  the  stack  carves  out  the  accustom'd  load, 
Deep  plunging  and  again  deep  plunging  oft 
His  broad  keen  knife  into  the  solid  mass." — The  Task. 

2.  Shyness  —  Fondness  for  Seclusion.  —  Jeffrey 
speaks  of  "that  extraordinary  combination  of  shyness  and 
ambition  to  which  we  are  probably  indebted  for  the  very  ex- 
istence of  Cowper's  poetry."  "  Poor  wounded  bird,"  ex- 
claims Sainte-Beuve,  "  he  sought  to  crouch  unseen  in  his 
corner,  to  recover  his  strength  little  by  little,  to  cure  him- 
self of  his  wound  in  secrecy  and  assuage  his  long  and  poig- 
nant terrors.  ...  In  the  ever-recurring  motive  and  theme 
of  the  blessedness  of  home  he  is  inexhaustible.  Macaulay 
calls  Cowper  "  the  gentle,  shy,  melancholy  Calvinist,  whose 
spirit  had  been  broken  by  fagging  at  school,"  and  Dawson 
speaks  of  "  the  holy  shades  and  quiet  ways  and  pleasant  places 
where  Cowper,  witty,  wise,  godly,  and  true,  delighted  to 
walk." 

"  But  little  society  disturbed  that  sequestered  life  ;  few  were 
the  men  and  fewer  the  women  whom  he  met ;  he  companied 
with  sheep  and  birds,  with  his  hares  and  his  spaniel,  till  he 
grew  to  know  them  as  friends." — Stop  ford  Brooke. 

"  No  stricken  deer  that  ever  left  the  herd  of  men  required 
a  solace  more.  .  .  .  He  speaks  from  the  contemplative 
air  of  rural  retirement.  He  went  thither  to  muse  on  the  per- 


260  COWPER 

ishing  pleasures  of  life.  His  disposition  was  of  that  retiring 
kind  that  shrinks  from  the  world,  and  is  free  and  at  ease  only 
in  seclusion.  To  exhibit  himself,  he  tells  us,  was  «  mortal 
poison.'  ...  He  desired  no  nearer  view  of  the  world 
than  he  could  gain  from  the  newspaper ;  or  through  the  loop- 
holes of  retreat  to  see  the  stir  of  the  great  Babel  and  not  feel 
the  crowd.  .  .  .  Such  beings  find  their  chief  happiness 
in  the  privacy  of  a  home.  .  .  .  They  turn  aside  from  the 
idols  of  fashion  to  worship  their  household  gods.  The  fire- 
side, the  accustomed  window,  the  familiar  garden,  bound  their 
desires." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Cowper's  work,  in  the  main,  has  only  the  sluggish  vital- 
ity of  this  life.  ...  A  vision  of  quiet  green  fields,  in- 
habited by  respectable  gentlefolk,  who  led  an  existence  of 
humble  routine,  made  up  Cowper's  world." — G.  E.  Wood- 
berry. 

"  He  seldom  launches  out  into  general  descriptions  of 
nature;  he  looks  at  her  over  his  clipped  hedges  and  from  his 
well-swept  garden  walks ;  or  if  he  makes  a  bolder  experiment 
now  and  then,  it  is  with  an  air  of  precaution.  ...  He 
is  delicate  to  fastidiousness,  and  is  glad  to  get  back,  after  a 
romantic  adventure  with  crazy  Kate,  a  party  of  gypsies,  or  a 
little  child  on  a  common,  to  the  drawing-room  and  the  ladies 
again,  to  the  sofa  and  the  tea-kettle." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  Cowper  said,  substantially,  '  Leave  the  world,'  as  Rous- 
seau said,  '  Upset  the  world.'  Limited  within  a  narrow  circle 
of  ideas,  and  living  in  a  society  where  the  great  issues  of  the 
times  were  not  represented  in  so  naked  a  form,  Cowper's  in- 
fluence ran  in  a  more  confined  channel."—  Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Although  he  was  neither  husband  nor  father,  Cowper  was 
the  poet  of  the  family  ;  he  was  the  poet  of  the  home,  of  a  well- 
ordered,  pure,  gently  animated  interior,  of  the  grove  we  see 
at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  of  the  chimney  corner." — Sainte- 
Beuve. 


COWPER 


26l 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Oh  blest  seclusion  from  a  jarring  world 
Which  he,  thus  occupied,  enjoys  !     Retreat 
Cannot  indeed  to  guilty  man  restore 
Lost  innocence,  or  cancel  follies  past ; 
But  it  has  peace,  and  much  secures  the  mind 
From  all  assaults  of  evil,  proving  still 
A  faithful  barrier,  not  o'erleaped  with  ease 
By  vicious  custom,  raging  uncontrolled 
Abroad  and  desolating  public  life. 
Had  I  the  choice  of  sublunary  good, 
What  could  I  wish  that  I  possess  not  here  ? 
Health,  leisure,  means  to  improve  it,  friendship,  peace." 

— The  Task. 

"  Thus  Conscience  pleads  her  cause  within  the  breast, 
Though  long  rebell'd  against,  not  yet  suppress'd, 
And  calls  a  creature  form'd  for  God  alone, 
For  Heaven's  high  purposes  and  not  his  own, 
Calls  him  away  from  selfish  ends  and  aims, 
From  what  debilitates  and  what  inflames, 
From  cities  humming  with  a  restless  crowd, 
Sordid  as  active,  ignorant  as  loud, 
Whose  highest  praise  is  that  they  live  in  vain, 
The  dupes  of  pleasure  or  the  slaves  of  gain  ; 
Where  works  of  man  are  clustered  close  around, 
And  works  of  God  are  hardly  to  be  found, 
To  regions  where,  in  spite  of  sin  and  woe, 
Traces  of  Eden  are  still  seen  below, 
Where  mountain,  river,  forest,  field,  and  grove, 
Remind  him  of  his  Maker's  power  and  love." 

— Retirement. 

"  Votaries  of  business  and  of  pleasure  prove 
Faithless  alike  in  friendship  and  in  love. 
Retired  from  all  the  circles  of  the  gay 
And  all  the  crowds  that  bustle  life  away, 
To  scenes  where  competition,  envy,  strife, 
Beget  no  thunder-clouds  to  trouble  life — 


262  COWPER 

Let  me,  the  charge  of  some  good  angel,  find 
One  who  has  known  and  has  escaped  mankind ; 
Polite  yet  virtuous,  who  has  brought  away 
The  manners,  not  the  morals,  of  the  day  : 
With  him,  perhaps  with  her  (for  men  have  known 
No  firmer  friendships  than  the  fair  have  shown), 
Let  me  enjoy,  in  some  unthought-of  spot, 
All  former  friends  forgiven  and  forgot, 
Down  to  the  close  of  life's  fast  fading  scene, 
Union  of  hearts  without  a  flaw  between." 

—  Valediction. 

V  Gloominess. — "  The  only  passion  that  ever  moved  him 
the  morbid  passion  of  despair,  when  the  cloud  that  ob- 
scured his  brain  pressed  heavy  upon  him  ;  and  it  was  only 
when  he  wrote  under  this  influence  that  he  produced  master- 
pieces, such  as  that  noble  and  terrible  poem,  '  The  Castaway  ' 
and  the  lines  of  self-description  in  '  The  Task.'  " — T.  H. 
Ward. 

"Unfortunately,  the  only  record  of  his  boyhood  is  the 
sombre  account  of  it  given  by  himself  in  after  years,  when  the 
disposition  to  increase  all  the  darker  shades  in  his  unregener- 
ate  days  was  strong  upon  him." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"The  impression  always  remained  by  him,  or  rather  the 
belief,  that  he  had  forfeited  God's  mercy  and  shut  himself  out 
from  hope  and  heaven  by  not  executing  the  will  of  Jehovah 
when  it  was  made  known  to  him  and  the  appointed  opportunity 
had  come.  By  letting  that  opportunity  pass  he  thought  he  had 
brought  upon  himself  perpetual  exclusion  from  God's  favor. 
For  a  long  time  he  thought  that  even  to  implore  mercy 
would  be  opposing  the  determinate  counsel  of  God.  .  .  . 
He  thought  himself  shut  out,  by  a  particular  edict,  from 
God's  mercy,  excluded  from  Heaven,  and  doomed  to  de- 
struction. He  thought  that  for  him  there  was  no  access  to 
the  mercy-seat,  and  that  he  had  no  right  to  pray." — G.  B. 
Cheever. 


COWPER  263 

"  His  whole  life  was  a  long  sadness.  .  .  .  Despair 
grew  upon  him  apace,  and  he  came  to  the  settled  opinion, 
which  never  left  him,  that  he  was  a  doomed,  damned  m#n, 
one  who  had  committed  an  irreparable  sin,  and  for  whom 
there  was  no  redemption  forevermore.  .  .  .  The  last 
five  years  of  his  life  were  passed  in  perpetual  gloom.  During 
these  five  years  he  is  said  never  to  have  smiled.  .  .  . 
His  life  was  a  perpetual  want." — George  Dawson. 

"  Cowper  was  profoundly  Christian;  from  the  point  of 
view  of  proportion  and  taste,  he  was  too  much  governed  by 
austerity.  He  had  a  side  almost  Hebraic  in  its  severity  and 
terror  .  .  .  and  at  the  same  time  he  sometimes  had  sud- 
denly a  sight,  a  vision,  of  Sinai." — Sainte-Beuve. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Obscurest  night  involved  the  sky, 

The  Atlantic  billows  roared, 
When  such  a  destined  wretch  as  I, 

Wash'd  headlong  from  on  board, 
Of  friends,  of  hope,  of  all  bereft, 
His  floating  home  forever  left. 

I  therefore  purpose  not  or  dream, 

Descanting  on  his  fate, 
To  give  the  melancholy  theme 

A  more  enduring  date  : 
But  misery  still  delights  to  trace 
Its  semblance  in  another's  case. 

No  voice  divine  the  storm  allay'd, 

No  light  propitious  shone  ; 
When,  snatch'd  from  all  effectual  aid, 

We  perish'd,  each  alone  : 
But  I  beneath  a  rougher  sea, 
And  whelm'd  in  deeper  gulfs  than  he.*' 

—  The  Castaway, 


264  COWPER 

"  The  Lord  will  happiness  divine 

On  contrite  hearts  bestow  ; 
Then  tell  me,  gracious  God,  is  mine 
A  contrite  heart  or  no  ? 

I  sometimes  think  myself  inclined 

To  love  thee,  if  I  could  ; 
But  often  feel  another  mind, 

Averse  to  all  that's  good. 

My  best  desires  are  faint  and  few — 

I  fain  would  strive  for  more  : 
But  when  I  cry,  '  My  strength  renew ! ' 

Seem  weaker  than  before. 

Thy  saints  are  comforted,  I  know, 

And  love  thy  house  of  prayer  ; 
I  therefore  go  where  others  go, 

But  find  no  comfort  there." 

—  The  Contrite  Heart. 

"  Oh,  happy  shades !  to  me  unblest, 

Friendly  to  peace  but  not  to  me  ; 
How  ill  the  scene  that  offers  rest 
And  heart  that  cannot  rest,  agree  ! 

This  glassy  stream,  that  spreading  pine, 
Those  alders  quivering  to  the  breeze, 

Might  soothe  a  soul  less  hurt  than  mine 
And  please,  if  anything  could  please. 

But  fix'd  unalterable  Care 

Forgoes  not  what  she  feels  within, 
Shows  the  same  sadness  everywhere, 

And  slights  the  season  and  the  scene." 

—  The  Shrubbery. 

4.  Love  of  Nature. — Cowper  was  the  harbinger  of  new 
and  better  things  in  English  poetry.  It  has  been  truly  said 
that  "he,  first  of  English  poets,  brought  men  back  from  the 
town  to  the  country." 


COWPER  265 

"  We  read  Cowper,  not  for  his  passion  or  for  his  ideas,  but 
for  his  love  of  nature  and  his  faithful  rendering  of  her  beauty. 
[Cowper  teaches  us  that]  God  made  the  country,  and 
man  made  the  town.  True  beauty  is  to  be  found  only  in  un- 
adulterate  nature ;  true  pleasure  only  in  the  fields  and  woods 
and  in  the  simple  offices  of  rural  and  domestic  life.  To  watch 
nature  at  her  work  ;  to  meditate  ;  to  cultivate  sympathy  with 
those  creatures  most  fresh  from  nature's  hand — with  animals 
and  the  poor  and  friends  of  your  home — this  [in  Cowper's 
judgment]  is  the  only  way  to  rational  happiness." — T.  H. 
Ward. 

"  God  wrought  within  his  shattered  brain  such  quick  poetic 

senses 

As  hills  have  language  for,  and  stars  harmonious  influences. 
The  pulse  of  dew  upon  the  grass  kept  his  within  its  number  ; 
And   silent   shadows   from    the   trees   refreshed   him   like   a 

slumber." — Mrs.  Browning. 

"  Springtime  almost  intoxicates  him.  .  .  .  There  is 
something  of  the  squirrel  in  the  gaiety  with  which  it  inspires 
him.  .  .  .  Cowper  loved  the  country  dearly ;  he  loved 
it  to  live  in,  to  dwell  in,  and  did  not  grow  weary  of  it  at  any 
age  or  at  any  season." — Sainte-Beuve. 

"  His  love  of  nature  is  at  once  of  a  narrower  and  sincerer 
kind  than  that  which  Rousseau  made  fashionable.  He  has  no 
tendency  to  the  misanthropic  or  cynical  view  which  induces 
men  of  morbid  or  affected  minds  to  profess  a  love  of  savage 
scenery  simply  because  it  is  savage.  Neither  does  he  rise  to 
the  more  philosophical  view,  which  sees  in  the  seas  and  the 
mountains  the  most  striking  symbols  of  the  great  forces  of  the 
universe.  Nature  is  to  him  a  collection  of  baubles  soon  to  be 
taken  away,  and  he  seeks  in  its  contemplation  temporary  relief 
from  anguish." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"It  was  with  an  eye  and  heart  thus  blissfully  enlightened 
that  Cowper  had  been  taught  to  look  upon  nature ;  and  inas- 


266  COWPER 

much  as  he  has  told  us  that,  both  in  his  delineations  of  nature 
and  of  the  human  heart,  he  had  drawn  all  from  experience, 
.  .  .  the  poet  that  could  write,  out  of  his  own  experience, 
<  The  Winter  Morning  Walk'  and  'The  Winter  Walk  at 
Noon,'  must  himself  have  been  the  happy  man,  appropriating 
nature  as  his  Father's  work — must  himself  have  felt  the  dear 
filial  relationship,  the  assurance  of  a  Father's  love  and  of  a 
child's  inheritance  in  heaven." — G.  B.  Chcever. 

11  His  sense  of  beauty  was  practically  confined  to  landscape 
and  small  animals.  .  .  .  His  poems  on  birds  and  flowers 
are  pretty  conceits,  but  at  the  present  day  remind  us  a  little 
of  the  nursery." — G.  E.  Woodbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thou  knowest  my  praise  of  nature  most  sincere, 
And  that  my  raptures  are  not  conjured  up 
To  serve  occasions  of  poetic  pomp, 
But  genuine.     .     .     . 

"  The  achievements  of  art  may  amuse, 

May  even  our  wonder  excite  ; 
But  groves,  hills,  and  valleys  diffuse 
A  lasting,  a  sacred  delight." 

"  O  Nature,  whose  Elysian  scenes  disclose 
His  bright  perfections  at  whose  will  they  rose, 
Next  to  the  power  that  formed  thee  and  sustains 
Be  thou  the  great  inspirer  of  my  strains." 

"  Lovely,  indeed,  the  mimic  works  of  art, 
But  nature's  works  far  lovelier.     I  admire, 
None  more  admires,  the  painter's  magic  skill, 
Who  shows  me  that  which  I  shall  never  see  : 

But  imitative  strokes  can  do  no  more 

Than  please  the  eye — sweet  Nature  every  sense ; 

The  air  salubrious  of  her  lofty  hills, 

The  cheering  fragrance  of  her  dewy  vales 


COWPER  267 

And  music  of  her  woods — no  works  of  man 

May  rival  these  ;  these  all  bespeak  a  power 

Peculiar  and  exclusively  her  own. 

Beneath  the  open  sky  she  spreads  the  feast ; 

'Tis  free  to  all — 'tis  every  day  renewed  ; 

Who  scorns  it,  starves  deservedly  at  home." — The  Task. 

"  Oh  Winter  !  ruler  of  the  inverted  year, 
Thy  scatter'd  hair  with  sleet  like  ashes  fill'd, 
Thy  breath  congeal'd  upon  thy  lips,  thy  cheeks 
Fringed  with  beard  made  white  with  other  snows 
Than  those  of  age,  thy  forehead  wrapp'd  in  clouds, 
A  leafless  branch  thy  sceptre,  and  thy  throne 
A  sliding  car  indebted  to  no  wheels, 
But  urged  by  storms  along  its  slippery  way; 
I  love  thee,  all  unlovely  as  thou  seem'st 
And  dreaded  as  thou  art ! "—  The  Task. 

"  The  night  was  winter  in  its  roughest  mood  ; 
The  morning  sharp  and  clear.     But  now  at  noon 
Upon  the  southern  side  of  the  slant  hills, 
And  where  the  woods  fence  off  the  northern  blasts, 
The  season  smiles,  resigning  all  its  rage, 
And  has  the  warmth  of  May.     The  vault  is  blue 
Without  a  cloud,  and  white  without  a  speck 
The  dazzling  splendor  of  the  scene  below. 
Again  the  harmony  comes  o'er  the  vale  ; 
And  through  the  trees  I  view  the  embattled  tower 
Whence  all  the  music.     I  again  perceive 
The  soothing  influence  of  the  wafted  strains, 
And  settle  in  soft  musings  as  I  tread 
The  walk,  still  verdant,  under  oaks  and  elms, 
Whose  outspread  branches  overarch  the  glade." 

—  The  Task. 

5.  Theoretical  Satire. — Critical  opinion  concerning 
"Cowper's  satire  is  as  diverse  as  it  is  concerning  Thackeray's. 
It  is  theoretical  in  that  it  is  directed  against  sins  real  and 
imaginary,  of  which  Cowper  had  no  personal  experience  or 
observation,  and  because  he  was  disposed  to  except  from  his 


268  COWPER 

broad  censure  almost  every  specific  case  that  happened  to 
come  within  his  notice. 

"  Society  was  to  him  an  abstraction,  on  which  he  dis- 
coursed like  a  pulpiteer.  His  satiric  whip  not  only  has  no 
lash,  it  is  brandished  in  the  air.  No  man  was  ever  less  quali- 
fied for  the  office  of  a  censor ;  his  judgment  is  at  once  dis- 
armed, and  a  breach  in  his  principles  is  at  once  made  by  the 
slightest  personal  influence.  Bishops  are  bad  :  but  the  bishop 
whose  brother  Cowper  knows  is  a  blessing  to  the  church.  Bit- 
ter lines  against  Popery  [the  original  lines  390  to  413  of 
the  poem  entitled  '  Consolation  ']  were  struck  out  because  the 
writer  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Throck- 
morton,  who  were  Roman  Catholics.  In  all  his  social  judg- 
ments, Cowper  is  at  a  wrong  point  of  view.  He  is  always 
deluded  by  the  idol  of  his  care.  He  writes  perpetually  on 
the  assumption  that  a  life  of  retirement  is  more  favorable  to 
virtue  than  a  life  of  action." — Goldwin  Smith. 

"  Cowper  knew  but  little  of  the  world,  and  he  became  its 
censor  because  he  was  so  ignorant.  He  prided  himself  upon 
being  of  it  but  not  in  it  and  looking  upon  it  through  his  re- 
treat. It  is  not  strange,  then,  that  much  of  his  satire  lacks 
point."— T.  H.  Ward. 

"  As  a  scold  we  think  Cowper  failed.  He  had  a  great  idea 
of  the  use  of  railing,  and  there  are  many  pages  of  laudable 
invective  against  various  vices,  which  we  feel  no  call  whatever 
to  defend.  But  a  great  vituperator  had  need  to  be  a  great 
hater ;  and  of  any  real  rage,  any  such  gall  and  bitterness  as 
great  and  irritable  satirists  have  in  other  ages  let  loose  upon 
men,  he  was  as  incapable  as  a  tame  hare."-  —  Walter  Bagehot. 

"The  most  effective  satirist  is  the  man  who  has  escaped 
with  labor  and  pain,  and  not  without  some  grievous  stains, 
from  the  slough  in  which  others  are  mired.  .  .  .  Sepa- 
rated by  a  retirement  of  twenty  years  from  a  world  with 
which  he  had  never  been  very  familiar,  and  at  which  he  only 
peeped  through  the  loop-holes  of  retreat,  his  satire  wanted 


COWPER  269 

the  brilliancy,  the  quickness  of  illustration  from  actual  life, 
which  alone  makes  satire  readable." — Leslie  Stephen. 

So  much  for  the  opinions  of  three  eminent  critics  ;  that 
some  commentators  have  seen  Cowper's  whip  brandished  else- 
where than  "in  air,"  is  evident  from  the  following  esti- 
mates : 

"  His  satire  is  excellent.  It  is  pointed  and  forcible,  with 
the  polished  manners  of  the  gentleman  and  the  indignation  of 
the  virtuous  man." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  Few  writers  are  more  unsparing  of  the  lash  than  the 
shrinkingly  sensitive  Cowper.  It  may  be  that  he  does  not 
lay  it  on  with  the  sense  of  personal  power  and  indignant  pay- 
ing off  of  old  scores  which  one  finds  in  a  Juvenal  or  a  Pope  ; 
but  the  conviction  that  he  is  the  mouthpiece  of  Providence, 
and  that,  when  William  Cowper  has  pronounced  a  man  rep- 
robate, the  smoke  of  his  burning  is  sure  to  ascend  up  forever 
and  ever,  stands  instead  of  much,  and  lends  unction  to  the 
hallowed  strain.  .  .  .  His  narrow,  exclusive,  severe,  and 
arbitrary  religious  creed — a  creed  which  made  him  as  sure 
that  other  people  were  wicked  and  marked  out  for  damnation 
as  that  himself  was  elected  and  saved — this  creed  speaks  out 
in  his  poems  in  unmistakable  tones  of  harsh  judgment  and 
unqualified  denunciation." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"The  recluse  in  an  out-of-the-way  village  set  himself  the 
task  of  becoming  a  Christian  Juvenal." — -/".  R.  Greene. 

"  In  his  satire  Cowper  touches,  not  with  savage  bitterness, 
but  with  a  gentleness  which  healed  while  it  lashed :  He  saw 
cities  and  their  evils  through  the  exaggeration  of  distance  and 
in  that  glare  of  morality  in  which  sin  is  so  magnified  that 
the  good  which  balances  it  is  lost.  He  saw  the  curse  which 
rested  on  man  and  nothing  else  when  he  looked  upon  the 
city.  Cowper  had  the  penetrating  irony  belonging  to  timid 
and  sorrowful  natures,  endowed  with  very  delicate  organs, 
which  are  doubtless  shocked  by  the  bluntness  and  coarseness 
around. ' ' — Stopford  Brooke. 


2/O  COWPER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Would  you  your  son  should  be  a  sot  or  dunce, 
Lascivious,  headstrong,  or  all  these  at  once  ; 
That  in  good  time  the  stripling's  finished  taste 
For  loose  expense  and  fashionable  waste 
Should  prove  your  ruin  and  his  own  at  last  ; 
Train  him  in  public  with  a  mob  of  boys, 
Childish  in  mischief  only  and  in  noise, 
Else  of  a  mannish  growth,  and,  five  in  ten, 
In  infidelity  and  lewdness,  men. 
There  shall  he  learn,  ere  sixteen  winters  old, 
That  authors  are  most  useful  pawn'd  or  sold  ; 
That  pedantry  is  all  that  schools  impart, 
But  taverns  teach  the  knowledge  of  the  heart  ; 
There  waiter  Dick,  with  bacchanalian  lays, 
Shall  win  his  heart,  and  have  his  drunken  praise, 
His  counsellor  and  bosom-friend  shall  prove, 
And  some  street-pacing  harlot  his  first  love." 

—  Tirocinium. 

"  But  loose  in  morals  and  in  manners  vain, 
In  conversation  frivolous,  in  dress 
Extreme,  at  once  rapacious  and  profuse  ; 
Frequent  in  park,  with  lady  at  his  side, 
Ambling  and  prattling  scandal  as  he  goes  ; 
But  rare  at  home,  and  never  at  his  books 
Or  with  his  pen,  save  when  he  scrawls  a  card  ; 
Constant  at  routs,  familiar  with  a  round 
Of  ladyships,  a  stranger  to  the  poor  ; 
Ambitious  of  preferment  for  its  gold, 
And  well  prepared  by  ignorance  and  sloth, 
By  infidelity  and  love  of  the  world, 
To  make  God's  work  a  sinecure  ;  a  slave 
To  his  own  pleasures  and  his  patron's  pride  — 
From  such  apostles,  O  ye  mitred  heads, 
Preserve  the  Church  !  and  lay  not  careless  hands 
On  skulls  that  cannot  teach  and  will  not  learn." 

—  The  Task. 


COWPER  271 

"  How  shall  I  speak  thee  or  thy  power  address, 
Thou  god  of  our  idolatry,  the  Press? 
By  thee  religion,  liberty,  and  laws 
Exert  their  influence  and  advance  their  cause  ; 
By  thee  worse  plagues  than  Pharaoh's  land  befell, 
Diffused,  make  earth  the  vestibule  of  hell ; 
Thou  fountain,  at  which  drink  the  good  and  wise  ; 
Thou  ever-bubbling  spring  of  endless  lies  ; 
Like  Eden's  dead  probationary  tree, 
Knowledge  of  good  and  evil  is  from  thee  !  " 

—  The  Progress  of  Error. 


6.  Patriotism. — "  Cowper  is  a  patriot  and  a  true  English- 
man, even  inclusive  of  prejudice  and  bias.  In  order  to  read 
him  as  he  ought  to  be  read  and  to  understand  thoroughly  all 
his  chief  points,  .  .  .  it  is  necessary  to  recollect  the 
events  of  those  years — the  American  War,  the  stormy  debates 
in  Parliament,  etc.,  etc." — Sainte-Beuve. 

"He  derived  his  patriotism,  and  drew  the, passion  with 
which  he  informed  it,  from  the  connection  of  his  country 
with  God.  It  was  God  who  was  king  of  England  and  was 
educating  the  nation  ;  and  this  conception  bound  all  citizens 
in  the  mutual  love  of  one  another  and  the  whole. 
It  is  not  a  note  of  mere  lyric  interest  in  Britain's  glory  on 
the  seas,  like  Thomson's  '  Rule  Britannia  ; '  .  .  .  it 
is  a  note  that  thrills  with  emotion  for  England  as  God's 
nation  and  having  a  work  to  do  for  man.  We  already 
breathe  the  air  of  the  patriotic  poetry  of  Wordsworth." 
—Stopford  Brooke. 

"  His  love  of  country  was  absolute.     He  says  : 
'  I  never  framed  a  wish  or  formed  a  plan 
That  flattered  me  with  hope  of  earthly  bliss, 
But  there  I  laid  the  scene.'  " — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Now  and  then,  in  reading  '  The  Task,'  we  come  across  a 
dash  of  warlike  patriotism  which,  amidst  the  general  philan- 


2/2  COWPER 

thropy,  surprises  and  offends  the  reader's  palate  like  garlic  in 
our  butter." — Goldwin  Smith. 

"  Cowper,  by  virtue  of  his  family  traditions,  was  in  theory 
a  sound  Whig.  ...  He  rises  into  a  warmth  on  behalf 
of  liberty  for  which  he  thinks  it  right  to  make  a  simple- 
minded  apology  in  a  note." — Leslie  Stephen. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  England,  with  all  thy  faults,  I  love  thee  still— 
My  country  !  and  while  yet  a  nook  is  left 
Where  English  minds  and  manners  may  be  found, 
Shall  be  constrain 'd  to  love  thee.     Though  thy  clime 
Be  fickle  and  thy  year  most  part  deform'd 
With  dripping  rains,  or  wither'd  by  a  frost — 
I  would  not  yet  exchange  thy  sullen  skies 
And  fields  without  a  flower  for  warmer  France 
With  all  her  vines  ;  nor  for  Ausonia's  groves 
Of  golden  fruitage  and  her  myrtle  bowers. 
To  shake  thy  senate  and  from  heights  sublime 
Of  patriot  eloquence  to  flash  down  fire 
Upon  thy  foes,  was  never  meant  my  task  : 
But  I  can  feel  thy  fortunes  and  partake 
Thy  joys  and  sorrows  with  as  true  a  heart." — The  Task. 

"  Peculiar  is  the  grace  by  thee  possess'd, 
Thy  foes  implacable,  thy  land  at  rest ; 
Thy  thunders  travel  over  earth  and  seas, 
And  all  at  home  is  pleasure,  wealth,  and  ease. 
'Tis  thus,  extending  his  tempestuous  arm, 
Thy  Maker  fills  the  nations  with  alarm  ; 
While  his  own  heaven  surveys  the  troubled  scene, 
And  feels  no  change,  unshaken  and  serene. 
Freedom,  in  other  lands  scarce  known  to  shine, 
Pours  out  a  flood  of  splendor  upon  thine  ; 
Thou  hast  as  bright  an  interest  in  her  rays 
As  ever  Roman  had  in  Rome's  best  days." 

— Expostulation. 


COWPER  2/3 

"  '  Slaves  cannot  breathe  in  England  ;  if  their  lungs 
Receive  our  air,  that  moment  they  are  free ; 
They  touch  our  country  and  their  shackles  fall.' 
That's  noble,  and  bespeaks  a  nation  proud 
And  jealous  of  the  blessing.     Spread  it  then, 
And  let  it  circulate  through  every  vein 
Of  all  your  empire  ;  that  where  Britain's  power 
Is  felt,  mankind  may  feel  her  mercy  too." — The  Task. 

7.  Sportiveness  —  Fantastic  Humor.  —  Cowper's 
humor  is  sui  generis,  for  the  reason  that,  excepting  perhaps 
the  humor  of  Lamb,  Cowper's  is  due  to  a  different  influence 
from  that  which  generally  gives  rise  to  this  element  of  style. 
As  Wood  berry  truly  says,  "  He  played  only  to  escape  his 
terror,  and  at  last  failed  even  in  that." 

"  It  has  been  objected  to  Hamlet  that  the  sportiveness  of 
the  prince  mars  the  effect  of  his  thoughtfulness.  But  it  is 
natural,  when  the  mind  is  haunted  and  oppressed  by  any 
painful  idea  which  it  is  necessary  to  conceal,  to  seek  relief  and 
at  the  same  time  increase  the  deception  by  a  kind  of  play- 
fulness. This  is  exemplified  in  Cowper's  letters. 
He  reared  his  airy  structures  to  keep  his  mind  from  being  swept 
away  by  a  gloomy  current.  To  this  end  he  surrendered  himself 
to  the  most  obvious  pleasantry  at  hand.  .  .  .  Cowper 
speculates  on  balloons  with  the  charming  playfulness  that 
marks  the  correspondence  of  a  lively  girl." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  His  playful  humor — call  it  rather  wit — was  at  all  times 
prepared  to  construct  out  of  the  slenderest  materials  an  amus- 
ing incident.  So  ready  and  so  graceful,  in  fact,  was  the  poet's 
fancy  that  he  knew  how  to  make  an  amusing  story  out  of 
nothing." — Higgins  (an  old  Neighbor). 

Speaking  of  the  well-known  story  of  the  suggestion  of  the 
theme  of  "  John  Gilpin,"  Cowper's  humorous  masterpiece, 
Southey  says  :  "  Lady  Austen's  conversation  had  as  happy  an 
effect  on  the  melancholy  spirit  of  Cowper  as  the  harp  of  David 
had  upon  Saul." 
18 


2/4  COWPER 

"When  Cowper  was  in  good  spirits  his  joy,  intensified  by 
insensibility  and  past  suffering,  played  like  a  fountain  of  light 
over  all  the  incidents  of  his  quiet  life.  An  ink-glass  . 
a  halibut  served  up  for  dinner,  a  cat  shut  up  in  a  drawer, 
sufficed  to  elicit  a  little  jet  of  poetical  delight,  the  highest 
and  brightest  jet  of  all  being  'John  Gilpin.'  " — Goldwin 
Smith. 

"He  trifles  because  he  is  driven  to  it  by  necessity.  His 
most  ludicrous  verses  have  been  written  in  his  saddest  moods." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

Cowper  confirms  Stephen's  statement ;  for  he  once  de- 
clared, "The  most  ludicrous  lines  I  ever  wrote  have  been 
written  in  the  saddest  mood." 

ILLUSTRATION. 

"  Away  went  Gilpin,  neck  or  nought ; 
Away  went  hat  and  wig  ; 
He  little  dreamt,  when  he  set  out, 
Of  running  such  a  rig. 

The  wind  did  blow,  the  cloak  did  fly, 
Like  streamer  long  and  gay, 
Till  loop  and  button  failing  both, 
At  last  it  flew  away. 

Then  might  all  people  well  discern 
The  bottles  he  had  slung  ; 
A  bottle  swinging  at  each  side, 
As  hath  been  said  or  sung. 

The  dogs  did  bark,  the  children  scream'd, 
Up  flew  the  windows  all ; 
And  every  soul  cried  out,  '  Well  done  ! ' 
As  loud  as  he  could  bawl. 

Away  went  Gilpin — who  but  he  ? 

His  fame  soon  spread  around  ; 

'  He  carries  weight ! '  '  he  rides  a  race  ! ' 

*  'Tis  for  a  thousand  pounds  ! ' 


COWPER  275 

And  still  as  fast  as  he  drew  near, 
'Twas  wonderful  to  view 
How  in  a  trice  the  turnpike  men, 
Their  gates  wide  open  threw. 

And  now,  as  he  went  bowing  down 
His  reeking  head  full  low, 
The  bottles  twain  behind  his  back 
Were  shatter'd  at  a  blow. 

Down  ran  the  wine  into  the  road, 
Most  piteous  to  be  seen, 
Which  made  his  horse's  flanks  to  smoke 
As  they  had  basted  been. 

But  still  he  seem'd  to  carry  weight, 

With  leathern  girdle  braced  ; 

For  all  might  see  the  bottle-necks 

Still  dangling  at  his  waist."— John  Gilpiris  Ride. 


8.  Sensitive  Tenderness— Sympathy. — Woodberry 
calls  Cowper  "The  companionable,  soft-hearted,  pathetic 
man,  whose  pastimes,  whether  in  gardening  or  poetry  or  in 
caring  for  his  pets,  were  a  refuge  from  the  most  poignant 
anguish;  "  and  Cowper  wrote  as  a  part  of  his  own  epitaph, 

"  His  highest  powers  to  the  heart  belong, 
His  virtue  formed  the  magic  of  his  song  " 

"  Apart  from  his  religion,  Cowper  was  eminently  human 
and  gentle-hearted ;  the  interest  which  he  took  in  his  tame 
hares  will  perhaps  be  remembered  when  much  of  his  wielding 
of  the  divine  thunderbolts  against  the  profane  shall  have  been 
forgotten." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  He   had   too   delicate   and    too   pure  a  heart. 
Poor  charming  soul,  pinched  like  a  frail  flower  transplanted 


COWPER 

from  a  warm  land  to  the  snow  ;  the  world's  temperature  was 
too  rough  for  it,  and  the  moral  law  which  should  have  sup- 
ported it  tore  it  with  its  thorns." — Taine. 

"  The  feminine  delicacy  and  purity  of  Cowper's  manners 
and  disposition,  ...  the  singular  gentleness  and  mod- 
esty of  his  whole  character,  .  .  .  make  us  indulgent  to 
his  weaknesses  and  more  delighted  with  his  excellencies  than 
if  he  had  been  the  centre  of  a  circle  of  wits  or  the  ornament 
of  a  literary  confederacy." — Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  The  sonnet  to  Mary  is  so  perfect  in  its  beauty  that  it 
could  not  but  be  universally  admired  ;  but  the  lines  to  the 
memory  of  his  mother  go  down  as  deep  into  other  hearts  as 
the  love  that  inspired  them  in  the  depths  of  his  own.  .  .  . 
The  unequalled  tenderness  and  pathos  of  this  poem,  and  the 
universal  experience  of  the  sweetness  and  preciousness  of  a 
mother's  love  by  which  all  hearts  answer  to  its  exquisite 
touches,  have  rendered  it  the  best  appreciated  and  admired  of 
all  Cowper's  productions." — G.  B.  Cheever. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  My  mother !  when  I  learn'd  that  thou  wast  dead, 
Say,  wast  thou  conscious  of  the  tears  I  shed  ? 
Hover'd  thy  spirit  o'er  thy  sorrowing  son, 
Wretch  even  then,  life's  journey  just  begun  ? 
Perhaps  thou  gavest  me,  though  unfelt,  a  kiss; 
Perhaps  a  tear,  if  souls  can  weep  in  bliss — 
Ah,  that  maternal  smile  !  it  answers — Yes. 
I  heard  the  bell  toll'd  on  thy  burial  day, 
I  saw  the  hearse  that  bore  thee  slow  away, 
And  turning  from  my  nursery  window,  drew 
A  long,  long  sigh,  and  wept  a  last  adieu  ! 
But  was  it  such? — It  was.     Where  thou  art  gone 
Adieus  and  farewells  are  a  sound  unknown. 
May  I  but  meet  thee  on  that  peaceful  shore, 
The  parting  word  shall  pass  my  lips  no  more !" 

— On  the  Receipt  of  My  Mother's  Picture. 


COWPER 


277 


But  ah!  what  wish  can  prosper,  or  what  prayer, 

From  merchants  rich  in  cargoes  of  despair, 

Who  drive  a  loathsome  traffic,  gauge  and  span 

And  buy  the  muscles  and  the  bones  of  man  ? 

The  tender  ties  of  father,  husband,  friend, 

All  bonds  of  nature  in  that  moment  end  ; 

And  each  endures,  while  yet  he  draws  his  breath, 

A  stroke  as  fatal  as  the  scythe  of  Death. 

The  sable  warrior,  frantic  with  regret 

Of  her  he  loves,  and  never  can  forget, 

Loses  in  tears  the  far-receding  shore, 

But  not  the  thought  that  they  must  meet  no  more ; 

Deprived  of  her  and  freedom  at  a  blow, 

What  has  he  left  that  he  can  yet  forego  ?  " — Charity. 

"  Thy  indistinct  expressions  seem 
Like  language  utter'd  in  a  dream  ; 
Yet  me  they  charm,  whate'er  the  theme, 
My  Mary ! 

Thy  silver  locks,  once  auburn  bright, 
Are  still  more  lovely  in  my  sight 
Than  golden  beams  of  orient  light, 
My  Mary ! 

For,  could  I  view  nor  them  nor  thee, 
What  sight  worth  seeing  could  I  see  ? 
The  sun  would  rise  in  vain  for  me, 

My  Mary ! 

Partakers  of  thy  sad  decline, 
Thy  hands  their  little  force  resign  ; 
Yet  gently  press'd,  press  gently  mine. 
My  Mary!" 
—  To  Mary  (Mrs.  Unwiri). 


9.  Unconventional      Morality  —  Didacticism. — 

"  Verse  was  deliberately  adopted  by  Cowper  at  a  mature  age 
as  a  means  of  usefulness.     .     .     .     He  became  a  lay-preacher 


2/8  COWPER 

in  numbers.  His  object  was  to  improve  men,  not  like  the 
bard  of  Avon  by  powerfully  unfolding  their  passions,  nor 
like  Pope  by  pure  satire,  but  rather  through  the  quiet  teach- 
ings of  the  moralist." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  He  says  over  and  over  again — and  his  entire  sincerity 
lifts  him  above  all  suspicion  of  the  affected  self — that  he 
looked  upon  his  poetical  works  as  at  best  innocent  triflings 
except  so  far  as  his  poems  were  versified  sermons.  His  inten- 
tion was  everywhere  didactic,  and  his  highest  ambition  was 
to  be  a  useful  auxiliary  to  the  prosaic  exhortations  of  Dodd- 
ridge,  Watts,  or  his  friend  Newton." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  A  genuine  desire  to  make  society  better  is  always  present 
in  his  poems." — Goldwin  Smith. 

1  'In  the  morality  of  his  poems  Cowper  is  honorably  dis- 
tinguished from  most  of  his  brethren.  Our  poets  have  too 
often  deviated  into  an  incorrect  system  of  morals,  coldly  de- 
livered ;  a  smothered,  polished,  filed  down  Christianity  ;  a 
medium  system  between  the  religion  of  the  Gospel  and  the 
heathen  philosophy,  and  intended,  apparently,  to  accom- 
modate the  two.  In  Gowper  all  is  reality  ;  there  is  no  doubt, 
no  vagueness  of  opinion ;  the  only  satisfactory  object  on 
which  our  affections  can  be  fixed  is  distinctly  and  fully 
pointed  out.  A  perfect  line  is  drawn  between  truth  and 
error.  The  heart  is  enlisted  on  the  side  of  religion;  every 
precept  is  just,  every  motive  efficacious.  Sensible  that  every 
vice  is  connected  with  the  rest — that  the  voluptuous  will  be- 
come hard-hearted,  and  the  unthinking  licentious — he  aims 
his  shafts  at  all ;  and  as  Gospel  truth  is  the  base  of  morality,  so 
is  it  the  ground-work  of  his  precepts." — Quarterly  Review ', 
Vol.  16. 

"  He  took  his  part  in  that  great  work  which  Samuel  John- 
son helped  to  do,  and  that  was  to  make  morality  fashionable. 
He  had  been  in  the  world  long  enough  to  get  polished  ;  he 
went  out  of  it  early  enough  to  be  pure  and  unsophisticated." 
—  George  Dawson. 


COWPER 


279 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Throughout  mankind,  the  Christian  kind  at  least, 
There  dwells  a  consciousness  in  every  breast 
That  folly  ends  where  genuine  hope  begins, 
And  he  that  finds  his  heaven  must  lose  his  sins. 
Nature  opposes,  with  her  utmost  force, 
This  riving  stroke,  this  ultimate  divorce ; 
And  while  Religion  seems  to  be  her  view, 
Hates  with  a  deep  sincerity  the  true  : 
For  this,  of  all  that  ever  influenced  man, 
Since  Abel  worshipp'd  or  the  world  began, 
This  only  spares  no  lust,  admits  no  plea, 
But  makes  him,  if  at  all,  completely  free  ; 
Sounds  forth  the  signal,  as  she  mounts  her  car, 
Of  an  eternal,  universal  war  ; 
Rejects  all  treaty,  penetrates  all  wiles, 
Scorns  with  the  same  indifference  frowns  and  smiles  ; 
Drives  through  the  realms  of  Sin  where  Riot  reels, 
And  grinds  his  crown  beneath  her  burning  wheels." 

—Hope. 


"  Stand  now  and  judge  thyself — Hast  thou  incurr'd 
His  anger  who  can  waste  thee  with  a  word, 
Who  poises  and  proportions  sea  and  land, 
Weighing  them  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand, 
And  in  whose  awful  sight  all  nations  seem 
As  grasshoppers,  as  dust,  a  drop,  a  dream  ? 
Hast  thou  (a  sacrilege  his  soul  abhors) 
Claim'd  all  the  glory  of  thy  prosperous  wars  ? 
Proud  of  thy  fleets  and  armies,  stolen  the  gem 
Of  his  just  praise  to  lavish  it  on  them  ? 
Hast  thou  not  learn'd,  what  thou  art  often  told, 
A  truth  still  sacred  and  believed  of  old, 
That  no  success  attends  on  spears  and  swords 
Unblest,  and  that  the  battle  is  the  Lord's  ?  " 

— Expostulation . 


280  COWPER 

"  Young  heads  are  giddy,  and  young  hearts  are  warm, 
And  make  mistakes  for  manhood  to  reform. 
Boys  are,  at  best,  but  pretty  buds  unblown, 
Whose  scent  and  hues  are  rather  guess'd  than  known. 
Each  dreams  that  each  is  just  what  he  appears, 
But  learns  his  error  in  maturer  years, 
When  disposition,  like  a  sail  unfurl'd, 
Shows  all  its  rents  and  patches  to  the  world. 
If,  therefore,  even  when  honest  in  design, 
A  boyish  friendship  may  so  soon  decline, 
'Twere  wiser  sure  to  inspire  a  little  heart 
With  just  abhorrence  for  so  mean  a  part 
Than  set  your  son  to  work  at  a  vile  trade 
For  wages  so  unlikely  to  be  paid." — Tirocinium. 

10.  Piety  —  Cheerful  Submissiveness. —  Macaulay 
ys  that  religion  was  the  muse  of  Cowper.  Hayley,  in  his 
famous  epitaph  on  Cowper,  calls  him  "  Devotion's  bard,  de- 
voutly just,"  and  Tuckerman  calls  him,  "  A  soul  gratefully 
recognizing  the  benignity  of  God,  in  the  fresh  verdure  of 
the  myrtle  and  the  mutual  attachment  of  doves,  and  yet  in- 
credulous of  his  care  for  his  own  eternal  destiny." 

Cowper  once  wrote  to  his  cousin,  Lady  Hesketh,  "  I  know, 
and  have  experience  of  it  every  day,  that  the  mercy  of  God, 
to  him  who  believes  himself  the  object  of  it,  is  more  than 
sufficient  to  compensate  for  the  loss  of  every  other  blessing." 

"  '  Unassisted  by  the  hope  of  divine  favor  !  '  This  makes 
the  continual  development  of  Cowper's  piety  most  wonderful. 
Here  was  the  bush  burning  but  not  consumed.  Here  was  the 
faith  of  submission,  reverence,  love,  glorifying  God  in  the  fires 
as  truly  as  was  ever  manifested  in  the  fiery  furnace." — G.  B. 
Cheever. 

"His  life  was  as  blameless  as  the  water  lilies  which  he 
loved.  .  .  .  Whatever  we  may  think  of  his  religion  or 
the  manner  of  it,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  indefinitely  ex- 
tended his  poetic  sympathy,  and  that  in  this  extension  of 
sympathy  we  find  ourselves  in  another  world  altogether  than 


COWPER  28l 

that  of  Dryden,  Pope,  or  Gray.  ...  In  Cowper  the 
poetry  of  human  wrong  begins  that  long,  long  cry  against 
oppression  and  evil  done  by  man  to  man,  .  .  .  which 
rings  louder  and  louder  through  Burns,  Coleridge,  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  and  Byron.  .  .  .  Cowper  carried  this 
poetry  of  human  wrong  into  the  prisons  with  Howard  and 
into  the  cottages  and  lives  of  the  poor.  .  .  .  But  here 
Cowper  could  not  stop.  He  saw  a  higher  liberty  than  any 
on  earth,  a  liberty  without  which  political  liberty  was  in  vain, 
with  which  even  the  slave  felt  free ;  the  liberty  of  heart  de- 
rived from  heaven.  Cowper  struck  the  first  note  of  revolu- 
tionary poetry.  He  struck  it  in  connection  with  God. 

.  .  His  tenderness  for  the  weak  and  poor  and  wronged 
is  as  sweet  as  his  hatred  of  oppression  is  strong. 
Cowper's  poetry  was  drenched  with  theology.  .  .  .  His 
religion  led  him  to  trace  all  moral  guilt  and  folly  to  the 
world's  rejection  of  Christ.  ...  He  looked  abroad  and 
saw  all  men  related  to  God,  it  mattered  not  of  what  nation, 
caste,  or  color.  .  .  .  The  range  of  his  interest  was  as 
wide  as  human  life,  and  as  he  sketched  he  saw  as  the  one 
ideal  and  the  one  remedy  for  all — the  cross  of  Christ."  — 
Stopford  Brooke. 

"  He  has  a  moral  and  religious  sentiment  that  never  aban- 
dons him — a  gleam  of  St.  Paul  and  the  apostles,  with  the 
appreciation  of  a  comfort  and  well-being  that  the  apostles 
never  knew." — Sainte-Beuve. 

"  One  very  great  task  which  Cowper  accomplished  was  to 
teach  men  of  taste  that  men  of  piety  are  not  necessarily  dull- 
ards and  fools,  and  to  teach  men  of  piety  that  they  need  not 
be  coarse  and  vulgar.  .  .  .  He  did  this  country  an  es- 
sential service,  which  almost  all  the  poets  have  been  better 
for.  Since  Cowper's  days  the  greatest  poets  have  been  on 
the  side  of  the  angels — men  as  timorous  about  wrong-doing 
as  they  are  glorious  in  the  praise  of  right.  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  and  Tennyson  are  in  a  direct  line  from  Cowper. 


282  COWPER 

It  is  a  comfort  to  find  a  poet  so  pious  as  Cowper  and 
not  a  '  muff.'  " — George  Dawson. 

"  It  is  not  for  himself  that  he  rejoices  only,  but  he  feels  in 
his  glowing  heart  the  gladness  and  coming  glory  of  the  whole 
universe.  .  .  .  The  writings  of  Cowper  testify  every- 
where to  that  grand  sermon  which  is  eternally  preaching  in 
the  open  air — that  gospel  of  the  field  and  forest,  which,  like 
the  gospel  of  Christ,  is  the  voice  of  that  love  that  overflows  the 
universe  ;  which  puts  down  all  sectarian  bitterness  in  him 
who  listens  to  it ;  which,  being  perfect,  '  casts  out  all  fear  ;  ' 
against  which  the  gloom  of  bigots  and  the  terrors  of  fanatics 
cannot  stand.  .  .  .  Despairing  even  of  God's  mercy 
and  of  salvation,  his  religious  poetry  is  of  the  most  cheerful 
and  triumphantly  glad  kind. 

'  His  soul  exults,  hope  animates  his  lays. 
The  sense  of  mercy  kindles  into  praise.' 

Filled  with  this  joyful  assurance,  wherever  he  turns  his  eyes 
on  the  magnificent  spectacle  of  creation,  he  finds  themes  of 
noble  gratulation . "  —  William  Hewitt. 

"  The  career  of  Cowper  was  one  to  fill  the  pessimist  with 
perennial  gladness.  ...  It  might  seem  that  nothing 
short  of  malignity  in  the  overruling  powers  could  account 
for  the  fiat  that  gave  up  so  pure,  simple,  and  cordial  a  nature 
to  be  the  prey  of  seven  devils.  .  .  .  In  1766  every  day 
the  time  from  breakfast  till  IT  A.M.  was  spent  [by  Cowper] 
in  reading  the  Bible  or  sermons  or  in  religious  conversation  ; 
the  hour  from  eleven  to  twelve  was  passed  in  church  at  ser- 
vice ;  in  the  afternoon  there  was  a  second  period  of  religious 
conversation  or  hymn  singing ;  at  night  there  was  commonly 
another  sermon  and  more  psalms,  and  after  that  family 
prayers.  .  .  .  This  substitution  of  dogma  for  intuition 
made  religion  .  .  .  not  a  life  but  a  disease.  .  .  .  His 
letters  are  the  effort  of  a  creed-believing  mind  to  get  rid  of 
itself."— £.  E.  'Woodberry. 


COWPER  283 

He  belongs  emphatically  to  Christianity.  ...  If 
the  shield  which,  for  eighteen  centuries,  Christ,  by  his 
teaching  and  his  death,  has  spread  over  the  weak  things 
of  this  world  should  fail,  and  might  should  again  become 
the  title  to  existence  and  the  measure  of  worth,  Cowper 
will  be  cast  aside  as  a  specimen  of  despicable  inferior- 
ity. ' ' — Goldwin  Smith. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"O  Lord,  my  best  desire  fulfil, 

And  help  me  to  resign 
Life,  health,  and  comfort  to  thy  will 
And  make  thy  pleasure  mine. 

Why  should  I  shrink  at  thy  command, 
Whose  love  forbids  my  fears  ? 

Or  tremble  at  the  gracious  hand 
That  wipes  away  my  tears  ? 

No,  let  me  rather  freely  yield 

What  most  I  prize  to  Thee  ; 
Who  never  hast  a  good  withheld, 

Or  wilt  withhold  from  me." — Submission. 

"  Nor  do  we  madly,  like  an  impious  world, 
Who  deem  religion  frenzy,  and  the  God 
That  made  them  an  intruder  on  their  joys, 
Start  at  his  awful  name,  or  deem  his  praise 
A  jarring  note.     Themes  of  a  graver  tone, 
Exciting  oft  our  gratitude  and  love, 
While  we  retrace  with  Memory's  pointing  wand, 
That  calls  the  past  to  our  exact  review, 
The  dangers  we  have  'scaped,  the  broken  snare, 
The  disappointed  foe,  deliverance  found 
Unlook'd  for,  life  preserved  and  peace  restored— 
Fruits  of  omnipotent  eternal  love." — The  Task. 


284  COWPER 

Weak  and  irresolute  is  man  ; 

The  purpose  of  to-day, 
Woven  with  pains  into  his  plan, 

To-morrow  rends  away. 


Bound  on  a  voyage  of  awful  length 

And  dangers  little  known, 
A  stranger  to  superior  strength, 

Man  vainly  trusts  his  own. 

But  oars  alone  can  ne'er  prevail 

To  reach  the  distant  coast  ; 
The  breath  of  Heaven  must  swell  the  sail, 

Or  all  the  toil  is  lost." — Human  Frailty. 


II.  Scriptural  Allusions. — As  might  be  expected  in  a 
writer  of  Cowper's  peculiar  religious  habits,  he  abounds  in 
scriptural  references  and  scriptural  language.  "  Not  only," 
says  Leslie  Stephen,  "  is  the  bulk  of  his  poetry  directly  re- 
ligious or  devotional,  but  on  publishing  «  The  Task  '  he  as- 
sures Newton  that  he  has  admitted  none  but  scriptural  images, 
and  has  kept  as  closely  as  possible  to  scriptural  language ;  " 
Cowper  thus  gives  evidence  that  this  characteristic  was  con- 
scious and  intentional. 

"His  entire  design  was  to  communicate  the  religious 
views  to  which  he  was  then  a  convert.  He  fancied  that  the 
vehicle  of  verse  might  bring  many  to  listen  to  truths  which 
they  would  he  disinclined  to  have  stated  to  them  in  simple 
prose.  And  however  tedious  the  recurrence  of  these  theolog- 
ical tenets  may  be,  to  the  common  reader,  it  is  certain  that  a 
portion  of  Cowper's  peculiar  popularity  may  be  traced  to  their 
expression." —  Walter  £  age  hot. 


COWPER  285 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  change  shall  please,  nor  shall  it  matter  aught 
Who  works  the  wonder,  if  it  be  but  wrought. 
'Tis  time,  however,  if  the  case  stands  thus, 
For  us  plain  folks  and  all  who  side  with  us 
To  build  our  altar,  confident  and  bold, 
And  say,  as  stern  Elijah  said  of  old, 
'  The  strife  now  stands  upon  a  fair  award, 
If  Israel's  Lord  be  God,  then  serve  the  Lord ; 
If  he  be  silent,  faith  is  all  a  whim, 
Then  Baal  is  the  God,  and  worship  him.' " 

— Conversation. 

Murmuring  and  ungrateful  Discontent, 

That  scorns  afflictions  mercifully  meant ; 

Those  humors,  tart  as  wine  upon  the  fret, 

Which  idleness  and  weariness  beget, 

These  and  a  thousand  plagues  that  haunt  the  breast, 

Fond  of  the  phantom  of  an  earthly  rest, 

Divine  communion  chases,  as  the  day 

Drives  to  their  dens  the  obedient  beasts  of  prey. 

See  Judah's  promised  king,  bereft  of  all, 

Driven  out  an  exile  from  the  face  of  Saul ; 

To  distant  caves  the  lonely  wanderer  flies, 

To  seek  that  peace  a  tyrant's  frown  denies." — Retirement. 

Have  we  not  track'd  the  felon  home,  and  found 
His  birthplace  and  his  dam  ?     The  country  mourns, 
Mourns  because  every  plague  that  can  infest 
Society,  and  that  saps  and  worms  the  base 
Of  the  edifice  that  Policy  has  raised, 
Swarms  in  all  quarters ;  meets  the  eye  and  ear, 
And  suffocates  the  breath  at  every  turn. 
Profusion  breeds  them  ;  and  the  cause  itself 
Of  that  calamitous  mischief  has  been  found — 
Found,  too,  where  most  offensive,  in  the  skirts 
Of  the  robed  pedagogue  !     Else  let  the  arraign'd 
Stand  up  unconscious  and  refute  the  charge. 
So,  when  the  Jewish  leader  stretch'd  his  arm, 


286  COWPER 

And  waved  his  rod  divine,  a  race  obscene, 
Spawn'd  in  the  muddy  beds  of  Nile,  came  forth, 
Polluting  Egypt  :  gardens,  fields,  and  plains 
Were  covered  with  the  pest;  the  streets  were  filPd ; 
The  croaking  nuisance  lurk' d- in  every  nook  ; 
Nor  palaces  nor  even  chambers  'scaped  ; 
And  the  land  stank — so  numerous  was  the  fry." 

—  The  Task. 

12.  Simplicity  —  Genuineness  —  Naturalness.  - 

"  His  verses  are  full  of  personal  emotions,  genuinely  felt,  never 
altered  or  disguised." — Taine. 

"  He  had  preserved  in  no  common  measure  the  innocence 
of  childhood." — Macaulay. 

11  An  earnest,  tender  writer  and  true  poet  enough  to  be 
true  to  himself." — Mrs.  Browning. 

"  Cowper's  virtue  was  in  his  simplicity  and  his  genuine- 
ness, rare  qualities  then.  .  .  .  His  good  fortune  was  in 
never  belonging  to  the  literary  set  or  bowing  to  the  town 
taste."— G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  He  delivered  English  verse  from  the  graveclothes  of 
French  drapery,  and  bade  it  come  forth  and  live  in  its  own 
natural  manly  life.  .  .  .  There  is  the  classic  slang.  I  hate 
it.  I  heartily  wish  some  one  would  put  Pegasus  out  of  the 
way.  The  muses  are  a  set  of  old  frumps,  and  I  heartily 
wish  some  one  would  pension  off  the  whole  '  tuneful  nine '  of 
them,  so  that  I  may  never  hear  of  them  again.  I  am  weary 
and  sick  of  Mars  and  Jove  and  Helicon  and  Ilissus  and  the 
whole  collection  of  stage  properties.  When  I  leave  these  for 
4  The  Task  '  it  is  like  walking  out  of  an  evening  party  into  the 
fresh  moonlight,  under  the  glorious  stars,  and  talking  about 
them,  not  finely,  but  simply,  heartily,  plainly,  truly.  I  re- 
gard Latin  verse,  Greek  verse,  and  piano-strumming  as  the 
three-headed  Moloch  to  which  England  offers  up  brains  and 
sense.  .  .  .  Cowper  wrote  English  poetry  into  the  Eng- 
lish language."  —  George  Daw  sen. 


COWPER  287 

"  No  English  poet  has  ever  excelled  Covvper  when  he  writes 
of  the  daily  human  affections.  In  him,  one  might  almost  say, 
began  in  English  poetry  that  direct,  close,  impassioned  repre- 
sentation, in  the  least  sensational  manner,  of  such  common  re- 
lations as  motherhood,  filial  piety,  friendship,  married  love, 
the  relation  of  man  to  animals — and  in  him  they  are  made  re- 
ligious. .  .  .  Cowper's  treatment  of  all  moral  subjects  is 
distinguished  from  his  treatment  of  his  personal  religion  by  an 
essential  manliness  of  tone.  Nowhere  in  our  poetry  is  there 
heard  a  finer  scorn  of  vanity,  ambition,  meanness  ;  nowhere  is 
truth  more  nobly  exalted  or  justice  more  sternly  glori- 
fied. .  .  .  Cowper  talks  as  naturally  of  all  men  as  Pope 
did  of  one  or  two  classes  of  men." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  There  is  something  in  the  sweetness  and  facility  of  the 
diction  that  diffuses  a  charm  over  the  whole  collection  [of 
Cowper's  letters]  and  communicates  an  interest  that  is  not 
often  commanded  by  performances  of  greater  dignity  and  pre- 
tension. ' ' — Francis  Jeffrey. 

11  His  observation  was  remarkably  nice  and  true  in  certain  de- 
partments of  life.  .  .  .  The  most  truly  poetic  phases  of 
Cowper's  verse  are  the  portions  devoted  to  rural  and  domestic 
subjects.  Here  he  was  at  home  and  alive  to  every  impression. ' ' 
— H.  T.  Tucker  man. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  No  noise  is  here,  or  none  that  hinders  thought. 
The  redbreast  warbles  still,  but  is  content 
With  slender  notes  and  more  than  half  suppress'd  ; 
Pleased  with  his  solitude  and  flitting  light 
From  spray  to  spray,  where'er  he  rests  he  shakes 
From  many  a  twig  the  pendant  drops  of  ice 
That  tinkle  in  the  wither'd  leaves  below. 
Stillness,  accompanied  with  sounds  so  soft, 
Charms  more  than  silence.     Meditation  here 
May  think  down  hours  to  moments.     Here  the  heart 
May  give  a  useful  lesson  to  the  head, 
And  Learning  wiser  grow  without  his  books." — 7^he  7 ask. 


288  COWPER 


A  poet's  cat,  sedate  and  grave 
As  poet  well  could  wish  to  have, 
Was  much  addicted  to  inquire 
For  nooks  to  which  she  might  retire, 
And  where,  secure  as  mouse  in  chink, 
She  might  repose,  or  sit  and  think. 
I  know  not  where  she  caught  the  trick  — 
Nature  perhaps  herself  had  cast  her 
In  such  a  mould  philosophique, 
Or  else  she  learn'd  it  of  her  master. 
Sometimes  ascending,  debonair, 
An  apple-tree  or  lofty  pear, 
Lodged  with  convenience  in  the  fork, 
She  vvatch'd  the  gardener  at  his  work  ; 
Sometimes  her  ease  and  solace  sought 
In  an  old  empty  watering-pot  : 
There,  wanting  nothing  save  a  fan, 
To  seem  some  nymph  in  her  sedan 
Apparell'd  in  exactest  sort, 
And  ready  to  be  borne  to  court." 

—  The  Retired  Cat. 

Whence  is  it  that,  amazed,  I  hear 

From  yonder  wither'd  spray, 
This  foremost  morn  of  all  the  year, 

The  melody  of  May  ? 

And  why,  since  thousands  would  be  proud 

Of  such  a  favor  shown, 
Am  I  selected  from  the  crowd 

To  witness  it  alone  ? 

Sing'st  thou,  sweet  Philomel,  to  me 

For  that  I  also  long 
Have  practised  in  the  groves  like  thee, 

Though  not  like  thee  in  song  ?  " 

—  To  the  Nightingale. 


KEATS,  1795-1821 

Biographical  Outline. — John  Keats,  born  October  31, 
1795,  at  Moorfields,  London  ;  father  a  livery-stable  employe  ; 
the  childhood  home  of  Keats  is  at  the  stable  in  Finsbury 
Circus;  the  family  remove  in  1801  to  Craven  Street,  City 
Road ;  Keats  is  put  into  an  excellent  school  in  his  eighth 
year;  in  April,  1804,  his  father  is  killed  in  an  accident,  and 
his  mother  marries  one  William  Raw  lings,  a  stable-keeper, 
but  is  soon  separated  from  him  ;  Keats' s  mother  then  retires 
with  her  children  to  her  father's  home  at  Edmonton  ;  the 
maternal  grandfather  dies  in  March,  1805,  and  leaves  a  for- 
tune of  ^13,000,  which  places  Keats  in  easy  circumstances 
during  his  youth  ;  he  attends  school  at  Enfield,  where  he 
forms  a  friendship  with  Charles  Cowden  Clark,  an  usher  and 
a  son  of  the  master;  as  a  boy,  Keats  is  "of  extraordinary 
mettle,  vivacity,  and  promise,"  courageous,  high-minded, 
and  generous ;  after  two  school  years  of  "  fighting  and 
frolic,"  he  begins  to  study  and  read  voraciously,  devouring 
much  literature,  criticism,  and  classical  mythology  ;  he  leaves 
school  with  a  fair  knowledge  of  Latin  and  general  history  and 
some  acquaintance  with  French;  although  a  "  true  Greek," 
he  knew  nothing  of  the  language  of  Greece  ;  Keats's  mother, 
to  whom  he  was  passionately  devoted,  died  in  February,  1810, 
and  in  the  July  following  Keats's  maternal  grandmother  places 
him,  with  his  sister  and  brothers,  in  the  care  of  two  guardi- 
ans, and  makes  over  about  ^"8,000  to  be  held  in  trust  for 
their  use  ;  at  the  direction  of  Mr.  Abbey,  one  of  the  trustees, 
John  is  withdrawn  from  school  in  1810,  at  the  close  of  his 
fifteenth  year,  and  is  apprenticed  for  five  years  to  a  surgeon 

289 


KEATS 

at  Edmonton  ;  his  duties  here  permit  frequent  visits  to  his 
old  school  at  Enfield,  where  Cowden  Clark  encourages  him  to 
continue  his  literary  studies,  especially  in  the  Elizabethan 
writers;  Spenser's  ''Faery  Queene  "  arouses  his  enthusiasm 
and  fires  his  ambition  to  become  a  poet  ;  his  lines  "  In  Imi- 
tation of  Spenser"  are  said  to  have  been  the  first  he  wrote, 
and  are  ascribed  to  his  sixteenth  or  eighteenth  year;  a  fellow 
surgeon's  apprentice  at  the  time  describes  Keats  as  "  an  idle, 
loafing  fellow,  always  writing  poetry." 

Late  in  the  autumn  of  1814  he  quarrels  with  his  master, 
possibly  because  he  had  neglected  medicine  for  poetry,  and  goes 
to  live  by  himself  in  London  ;  the  death  of  his  grandfather 
and  of  his  only  other  adult  relative  about  this  time  throws 
Keats  and  his  brother  and  sister  upon  the  mercy  of  Abbey, 
their  "meddling"  guardian;  on  reaching  London,  Keats 
continues  his  medical  studies  at  the  hospital  of  Saint  Thomas 
and  Saint  Guys  ;  at  first,  he  lodges  at  8  Dean  Street,  with  two 
other  students  ;  Keats  is  a  capable  student  at  the  hospital,  and 
does  not  shirk  the  routine  work ;  but  his  room-mate  writes 
that  "  his  absolute  devotion  to  poetry  prevented  his  having  any 
other  tastes  or  indulging  in  any  vice;"  in  February,  1815, 
he  writes  the  address  "  To  Hope  "  and  the  "  Sonnet  to  Leigh 
Hunt,"  to  honor  that  writer's  release  from  prison;  during 
the  same  year,  or  earlier,  he  writes  two  posthumous  sonnets  to 
Byron  and  Chatterton,  the  series  beginning  "  Woman  When 
I  Behold  Thee,  Flippant,  Vain,"  and  his  famous  sonnet  "  On 
First  Looking  into  Chapman's  Homer ;  "  the  latter  was  com- 
posed during  the  summer,  just  after  a  night's  reading  with 
Cowden  Clark,  who  had  come  to  reside  in  Clerkenwell ;  in 
November,  1815,  Keats  writes  his  rhymed  epistle  to  Felton 
Mathew,  and  in  the  following  February  his  valentine,  "  Hadst 
Thou  Lived  in  the  Days  of  Old,"  addressed  to  the  future  wife 
of  his  brother  George  ;  in  the  spring  of  1816,  through  Cowden 
Clark,  Keats  meets  Leigh  Hunt,  who  soon  becomes  his  inti- 
mate friend  and  stimulates  him  along  romantic  lines,  but  un- 


KEATS  291 

fortunately  also  brings  upon  Keats  the  obloquy  already  mani- 
fested toward  himself  by  the  conservative  critics. 

On  March  3,  1816,  Keats  is  appointed  dresser  in  Guy's 
Hospital,  and  on  the  25th  of  the  following  July  he  passes 
creditably  an  examination  as  licentiate  at  Apothecaries'  Hall; 
his  first  printed  verse  was  the  sonnet  beginning  "  O  Solitude, 
if  I  with  Thee  Might  Dwell,"  which  appeared  in  Leigh  Hunt's 
Examiner,  May  5,1816;  at  the  home  of  Hunt  Keats  receives 
much  literary  inspiration,  and  meets  there  Shelley  and  J.  H. 
Reynolds,  with  whom  he  forms  a  close  and  lasting  friendship; 
he  develops  a  brotherly  intimacy,  also,  with  Reynolds's  sis- 
ters, one  of  whom  afterward  married  Thomas  Hood  ;  in  the 
summer  of  1816  Keats  removes  his  lodgings  to  the  Poultry,  to 
be  near  his  brothers,  then  employed  in  the  counting-house  of 
Mr.  Abbey,  but  spends  most  of  his  time  at  the  home  of  Hunt 
in  the  "Vale  of  Health"  at  Hampstead,  "where  a  bed  was 
always  ready  for  him  in  the  library  ;  "  this  is  the  house  cel- 
ebrated in  Keats's  verses  "  Sleep  and  Poetry;  "  during  the 
summer  of  1817  he  also  writes  at  Hunt's  house  the  verses  be- 
ginning "  I  Stood  Tiptoe  Upon  a  Little  Hill,"  intended  as  part 
of  a  poem  on  the  myth  of  Endymion,  and  the  fragment  called 
"  Calidore  ;  "  in  the  early  autumn  he  is  at  Margate,  where 
he  writes  the  epistles  to  his  brother  George  and  Cowden  Clark 
and  the  sonnet  beginning  "  Many  the  Wonders  I  This  Day 
Have  Seen  ;  "  on  his  return  to  London  lodgings  he  writes  the 
sonnets  "To  My  Brother"  and  "Keen,  Fitful  Gusts  Are 
Whispering;"  his  familiar  letters  to  friends  and  relatives, 
which  form  such  an  attractive  picture  in  his  later  years,  be- 
gin in  the  autumn  of  1817. 

In  November,  1817,  through  Hunt,  Keats  meets  the  paint- 
er Haydon,  to  whom  he  addresses  the  sonnet  "  Great  Spirits 
Now  on  Earth  Sojourning  ;  "  the  result  is  a  warm  friendship 
between  the  two  and  a  marked  influence  over  Keats  by  Hay- 
don ;  during  the  same  month  Hunt  publishes  in  his  Examiner 
Keats's  sonnet  "On  Looking  into  Chapman's  Homer,"  and 


292  KEATS 

calls  attention  to  the  author's  poetic  ability,  coupling  his 
name  with  Shelley's  ;  four  others  of  Keats' s  sonnets  appear  in 
the  Examiner  during  the  following  spring,  and  "  his  poetic 
vocation  seems  to  have  been  sealed  ; ' '  although  he  has  per- 
formed some  successful  operations  as  a  surgeon,  Keats  deter- 
mines, against  the  remonstrance  of  his  guardian,  Mr.  Abbey, 
to  abandon  the  profession  of  surgery  and  to  bring  out  a  vol- 
ume of  his  verses  ;  Shelley  at  first  advises  Keats  to  withhold 
his  verses,  but  afterward  helps  him  to  find  a  publisher ;  the 
volume  appears  in  March,  1817,  with  a  dedication  to  Leigh 
Hunt ;  the  book  has  no  sale,  and  Keats's  brothers  are  dis- 
gusted;  in  April,  1817,  on  the  advice  of  Haydon,  Keats 
goes  alone  to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  that  he  may  "  be  alone  to 
improve  himself,"  and  takes  lodgings  at  Shanklin,  where  he 
writes  his  "  Ode  on  the  Sea,"  published  in  the  Champion  for 
August,  1817,  and  continues  his  "  Endymion,"  begun  but 
abandoned  long  before ;  he  is  aided  financially  by  the  pub- 
lishers of  the  London  Magazine,  who  agree  to  publish 
"  Endymion  "  when  completed,  and  allow  Keats  to  draw  on 
them  in  advance  ;  in  May  he  goes  to  Margate,  where  he  is 
joined  by  his  brother  Tom  ;  they  go  thence  to  Canterbury  for 
several  weeks,  and  in  the  midsummer  of  1817  the  three  broth- 
ers are  together  at  Hampstead  in  Welhvalk  ;  here  Keats  forms 
a  fast  friendship  with  C.  W.  Dilke  and  C.  A.  Brown,  liter- 
ary men  who  live  at  Lawn  Bank  in  John  Street ;  he  declines 
to  visit  Shelley  at  Great  Marlow,  "  in  order  that  he  might," 
as  he  said,  "  have  his  own  unfettered  scope  ;  "  he  spends  the 
month  of  September,  1817,  at  Oxford,  at  the  home  of  a  friend, 
and  begins  there  his  letters  to  his  young  sister  Fannie ;  while 
here,  also,  he  first  shows  signs  of  poor  health  ;  he  had  hereto- 
fore been  robust,  and,  during  1817  or  1818,  had  thrashed  a 
butcher  at  Hampstead  ;  he  returns  to  London  in  October,  and 
finds  a  quarrel  on  between  Hunt  and  Haydon  and  some  cool- 
ness in  Hunt  toward  himself;  Keats  spends  the  last  part  of 
November  at  Burford  Bridge,  near  Dorking,  where  he  finishes 


KEATS  293 

"Endymion,"  completing  the  work  exactly  within  the  time 
he  had  allowed  himself  for  it ;  here  he  also  studies  Shake- 
speare's minor  poems  and  sonnets  ;  he  returns  to  Hampstead 
in  December  ;  in  the  early  winter  he  writes  for  the  Champion 
three  short  pieces  of  dramatic  criticism,  including  that  on 
"  Richard  III.  ;  "  during  the  winter  he  reads  the  proofs  of 
"  Endymion,"  enjoys  himself  socially,  and,  through  Haydon, 
meets  Wordsworth,  who,  when  Keats  recites  his  "  Hymn  to 
Pan  "  from  "  Endymion,"  by  Wordsworth's  request,  calls  it 
"  a  pretty  piece  of  paganism  ;  "  during  the  winter  Keats  also 
meets  William  Godwin,  Charles  Lamb,  and  Hazlitt,  whose 
lectures  he  regularly  attends ;  during  the  winter  he  also  writes 
several  minor  poems  and  sonnets,  including  those  begin- 
ning "O  Golden-tongued  Romance  with  Serene  Lute"  and 
"  Time's  Sea  Has  Been  Five  Years  at  Its  Slow  Ebb  "  and  those 
entitled  "The  Nile"  (written  February  4th,  in  competition 
with  Hunt  and  Shelley),  "To  Apollo,"  "  To  Robin  Hood,  " 
and  "  On  Seeing  a  Lock  of  Milton's  Hair." 

In  March,  1818,  Keats  goes  to  Teignmouth  to  nurse  his 
invalid  brother  Tom;  he  remains  until  about  May  i5th, 
and  while  at  Teignmouth  writes  "Isabella"  and  the  preface 
to  "Endymion,"  and  studies  "  Paradise  Lost"  with  a  view 
to  writing  his  "  Hyperion  ;  "  he  writes  here,  also,  his  metri- 
cal epistle  to  Reynolds  ;  returning  with  his  brother  to  Hamp- 
stead, he  remains  five  weeks;  meantime  "Endymion"  ap- 
pears, but  attracts  little  attention ;  after  the  marriage  and 
emigration  of  his  brother  George  to  America,  in  June,  1818, 
Keats  starts  on  a  walking  tour  with  his  friend  Charles  Armi- 
tage  Brown  through  the  Lake  District  and  Scotland  ;  they 
visit  Lancaster,  Windermere,  Ambleside,  Derwent- water, 
Keswick,  Carlisle,  Dumfries,  The  Giant's  Causeway,  Glas- 
gow, the  Trossachs,  the  Hebrides,  and  Inverness  ;  during  the 
trip  Keats  writes  many  letters  and  verses,  but  only  his  "  Meg 
Merrilies  "  and  his  "  Fingal's  Cave  "  are  worth  preservation  ; 
the  exposure  in  tramping  in  the  Highlands  brings  on  a  throat 


294  KEATS 

trouble,  from  which  Keats  never  recovered  ;  by  the  advice  of 
a  physician  he  sails  at  once  from  Cromarty  for  London,  and 
reaches  his  Hampstead  lodgings  August  i8th  ;  for  the  next 
three  and  a  half  months  he  nurses  his  dying  brother  Tom, 
while  his  loneliness  and  the  insulting  criticisms  of  his  "  En- 
dymion  "  in  Blackwood 's  Magazine  and  the  Quarterly  Re- 
view discourage  Keats  and  injure  his  health  ;  but  he  rallies, 
and  declares,  "  I  think  I  shall  be  among  the  English  poets 
after  my  death  ;  "  much  sympathy  for  him  is  privately  ex- 
pressed, and  an  anonymous  adviser  sends  him  ^25. 

In  October,  1818,  he  begins  his  series  of  long  journal-let- 
ters addressed  to  his  brother  in  America  ;  he  had  begun  to 
write  "Hyperion"  in  September;  soon  afterward  he  writes 
"I  never  was  in  love,  yet  the  voice  and  shape  of  a  woman 
have  haunted  me  these  two  days.  .  .  .  This  morning 
poetry  has  conquered,  I  have  relapsed  into  those  abstractions 
which  are  my  only  life.  .  .  .  There  is  an  awful  warmth 
about  my  heart,  like  a  load  of  immortality  "  ;  this  first  at- 
traction appears  transitory,  but  Keats  soon  finds  "  his  real 
enslaver  "  in  the  person  of  Fanny  Brawne,  a  girl  of  seventeen, 
daughter  of  a  widow  living  in  Downshire  Street,  near  by  ; 
Keats  describes  her  to  his  brother  as  "  beautiful  and  elegant, 
graceful,  silly,  fashionable,  and  strange ;  "  although  she  seems 
to  have  had  little  appreciation  of  Keats's  gifts  and  little  consid- 
eration for  his  circumstances  and  temperament,  Miss  Brawne 
becomes  engaged  to  him  during  the  winter  ;  she  seems  to 
have  been  an  accomplished  flirt,  and  entered  freely  into  social 
pleasures  from  which  Keats's  health  and  occupations  debarred 
him  ;  his  brother  Tom  dies  December  i,  1818,  and  Keats 
immediately  complies  with  Brown's  invitation  to  come  and 
keep  house  with  him  at  Wentworth  Place  ;  he  works,  during 
the  winter,  on  "Hyperion,"  and  sends  to  his  American 
friends  his  two  lyrics,  "  Bards  of  Passion  and  of  Mirth  "  and 
"  Ever  Let  the  Fancy  Roam  ;  "  late  in  January,  1819,  he 
goes  with  Brown  to  Sussex,  where  they  visit  Dilke  and  other 


KEATS  295 

mutual  friends;  while  at  Bedhampton,  in  the  house  of  Mr. 
John  Snook,  Keats  writes  "The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,"  ap- 
parently composed  in  part  before,  and  begins  his  fragment, 
"  The  Eve  of  St.  Mark  ;  "  he  returns  to  Wentworth  Place 
in  February,  and,  during  the  ensuing  spring,  with  no  sanguine 
belief  in  their  success  or  care  for  their  preservation,  he  com- 
poses there  his  finest  meditative  odes,  including  "  On  Indo- 
lence," "To  Psyche,"  "  To  a  Nightingale,"  and  probably 
"  To  Melancholy  ;  "  the  ode  "  To  a  Nightingale  "  was  first 
printed  in  July,  1819,  in  "The  Annals  of  the  Fine  Arts  ;  " 
during  the  same  spring  he  writes  the  ballad  "La  Belle  Dame 
sans  Merci"  (which  he  copies  for  his  brother  "with  laugh- 
ing comment,  as  if  it  were  nothing  at  all "),  his  "  Chorus  of 
Fairies,"  written  for  a  projected  mask  or  opera,  and  his  son- 
nets beginning  "Why  Did  I  Laugh  To-night?"  and  "As 
Hermes  Took  to  His  Feathers  Light,"  besides  the  two  on 
"Fame"  and  that  "To  Sleep;"  "La  Belle  Dame  sans 
Merci"  was  printed  by  Hunt  in  the  Indicator,  May  20,  1820, 
with  the  signature  "  Canone;  "  meantime  Keats  is  worried  by 
failing  health,  unrequited  love,  the  contempt  of  literary  crit- 
ics, and  financial  troubles;  during  the  summer  of  1819  his 
supplies  from  his  guardian  are  entirely  stopped  for  a  time, 
while  Haydon  and  other  friends  to  whom  Keats  had  loaned 
over  ^200  are  unable  to  pay  him  ;  he  had  "  no  extravagancies 
of  his  own."  and  seems  to  have  forgotten  his  share  in  the 
direct  legacy  under  his  grandfather's  will ;  he  seriously  con- 
templates abandoning  literature  and  taking  up  journalism  or 
surgery  for  a  living  ;  he  is  dissuaded  by  Brown,  who  seems 
fully  to  have  appreciated  Keats,  and  who  loans  him  money 
for  his  needs  during  the  summer ;  Keats  and  Brown  then  go 
to  join  their  friend  Rice  at  Shanklin,  where  the  two  begin  to 
collaborate  on  a  tragedy  on  Otho  the  Great,  Brown  making 
the  plot  and  Keats  writing  the  dialogue  ;  Keats  also  begins 
his  "  Lamia  "  at  Shanklin  ;  on  August  i2th  Keats  and  Brown 
remove  to  Winchester,  hoping  thus  to  improve  Keats's  health  ; 


296  KEATS 

he  is  better  at  Winchester,  where  he  remains  two  months,  and 
where  he  and  Brown  finish  "  Otho  the  Great,"  while  Keats 
begins  a  new  tragedy,  completes  "  Lamia,"  adds  to  the  "  The 
Eve  of  St.  Mark,"  and  writes  his  ode  to  "Autumn;" 
meantime  he  studies  Italian  zealously,  and  writes  long  letters 
to  America,  in  which  he  determines  "to  cease  fretting  and 
face  life  bravely;  "  he  takes  a  lodging  at  25  College  Street, 
London,  settles  there  October  10,  1819,  and  tries  to  get  em- 
ployment as  dramatic  critic  on  London  journals ;  he  also  pro- 
poses "  to  write  on  the  liberal  side  of  the  question  for  whoever 
will  pay  me  ;  ' '  but  consumption  and  hypochondria  soon  take 
possession  of  him  ;  on  October  i6th  he  settles  with  Brown 
at  Westminster,  so  as  to  be  next  door  to  \\i&  fiancee  t  and  "  from 
this  time  forth  he  knew  neither  peace  of  mind  nor  health  of 
body  again  ; ' '  about  this  time  ' '  Otho  the  Great  ' '  is  re- 
jected, without  examination,  by  the  management  of  the  Covent 
Garden  Theatre,  and  is  provisionally  accepted  by  the  manage- 
ment of  Drury  Lane;  November  17,  1819,  Keats  writes  to 
his  publishers:  "  The  writing  of  a  few  fine  plays  is  still  my 
greatest  ambition,  when  I  do  feel  ambitious,  which  is  very  sel- 
dom ;"  inspired  with  Byron's  success  with  "  Beppo  "  and 
"  Don  Juan,"  Keats  plans  a  fairy  poem,  which  he  begins  un- 
der the  title  "  Cap  and  Bells ;  "  about  this  time  he  writes  to 
Fanny  Brawne  in  "  piteous  love-plaints,"  published  posthu- 
mously, poems  which  he  would  doubtless  never  have  vol- 
untarily published  ;  he  completes  eighty-eight  Spenserian 
stanzas,  which  are  signed  with  the  nom  de  plume  "  Lucy 
Vaughn  Lloyd;"  at  the  same  time  he  takes  up  "Hyper- 
ion," which  had  been  thrown  aside  for  six  months,  amplifies 
and  recasts  it,  and  prepares  the  allegorical  preamble  ;  this 
recast  has  often  wrongly  been  taken  for  a  first  revision,  as 
it  is  greatly  inferior  to  the  original  poem  ;  it  reflects  Keats's 
bitterness  and  despondency  at  the  time;  he  seems  at  this 
time  to  have  sought  relief  from  his  "rooted  misery"  in 
some  dissipation,  which  only  aggravated  his  maladies ;  he 


KEATS  297 

begins  taking  laudanum,  but  abandons  it  on  Brown's  remon- 
strance. 

From  Christmas,  1819,  he  gives  up  writing  on  "  Cap  and 
Bells  "  and  "  The  Vision,"  and  is  confined  to  his  home  most 
of  the  time  by  ill-health  ;  he  receives  a  flying  visit  in  January, 
1820,  from  his  brother  George,  who  finds  Keats  "not  a  sane 
being;"  on  February  3,  1820,  after  a  night-ride  outside  a 
coach  from  London  to  Hampstead,  he  is  seized  with  a  hem- 
orrhage ;  nervous  prostration  follows,  and  Keats  is  confined 
to  his  bed  for  six  weeks,  meantime  tenderly  nursed  by  Brown 
and  exchanging  daily  notes  with  Fanny  Brawne  ;  partially  re- 
gaining his  strength  in  March,  he  goes  with  Brown  to  Graves- 
end,  and  returns  to  a  lodging  in  Wesleyan  Place,  Kentish 
Farm,  so  as  to  be  near  Leigh  Hunt,  while  Brown  makes 
another  tour  in  Scotland  ;  here  Keats  reads  the  proof  of  a  vol- 
ume of  poems  written  after  "  Endymion  "  and  published  in 
July,  1820,  under  the  title  of  "  Lamia,  Isabella,  The  Eve  of 
St.  Agnes,  and  Other  Poems ;  "  all  the  poems  of  this  volume, 
which  made  Keats  immortal,  were  written  between  March, 
1818,  and  October,  1819;  he  says,  "I  feel  sure  I  should 
write,  from  the  mere  yearning  and  tenderness  I  have  for  the 
beautiful,  even  if  my  night's  labors  should  be  burnt  every  morn- 
ing and  no  eye  ever  rest  upon  them  ;  "  this  volume  opens  the 
eyes  of  critics  like  Lamb  and  Shelley  to  Keats' s  true  genius, 
while  even  Jeffrey  at  once  writes  a  laudatory  critique  in  the 
Edinburgh  Review;  but  fresh  hemorrhages,  followed  by  in- 
creased despondency  and  weakness,  come  to  Keats  in  June ; 
the  Hunts  take  him  into  their  home  and  nurse  him  tenderly, 
but  his  jealous  misery  causes  him  to  distrust  his  best  friends  ; 
on  August  1 2th  he  leaves  Hunt's  house,  charging  him  with 
opening  a  letter  from  Fanny  Brawne,  and  is  taken  in  by  the 
latter's  mother  in  Wentworth  Place. 

On  partially  regaining  strength,  he  determines  to  go  to 
Italy  for  his  health  ;  he  declines  Shelley's  cordial  invitation 
to  visit  him  in  Pisa,  and  sails  from  London,  September  18, 


298  KEATS 

1820,  with  his  more  intimate  friend,  the  painter  Severn  ;  on 
the  voyage  toward  Rome  he  lands  for  a  day  on  the  Dorset 
coast,  where  he  composes  his  last  poem,  the  sonnet  beginning 
"  Bright  star,  would  I  were  as  steadfast  as  thou  art ;  "  he  pro- 
jects, also,  but  does  not  write  a  poem  on  "  Sabrina ;  "  after 
a  month's  voyage  he  and  Severn  reach  Naples  ;  he  declines  a 
second  invitation  to  visit  Shelley,  and  starts  with  Severn  for 
Rome  about  November  i2th  ;  at  Rome  they  take  lodgings  in 
the  Piazza,  di  Spagna,  where  Keats  spends  the  last  three 
months  of  his  life ;  after  a  violent  relapse  in  December,  he 
begs  Severn  to  let  him  end  his  life  with  laudanum  ;  Severn 
nurses  him  assiduously  ;  during  the  last  days  Keats  reads  much 
in  Jeremy  Taylor's  "Holy  Living  and  Dying,"  and  is  con- 
soled by  Severn's  playing  of  Haydn's  sonatas ;  he  daily  asks 
his  physician,  "  When  will  this  posthumous  life  of  mine  come 
to  an  end?"  and  asks  that  his  epitaph  be,  "Here  lies  one 
whose  name  was  writ  in  water  ;  "  he  dies  at  Rome,  in  Severn's 
arms,  February  23,  1821,  and  is  buried  there  in  the  old  Prot- 
estant cemetery  ;  Severn  was  buried  by  his  side  in  1881. 

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Tuckerman,    H.    T.,    "Characteristics   of    Literature."      Philadelphia, 

1849,  256-269. 
Woodberry,   G.    E.,  "Studies  in   Literature  and  Life."     Boston,  1890, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  47-66. 

Caine,  H.,  "  Cobwebs  of  Criticism."     London,  1883,  Stock,  158-190. 
Tuckerman,    H.    T.,    "Thoughts    on    the    Poets."     New   York,    1846, 

Francis,  238-250. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  "  Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,    1878,   Moxon, 

349-362. 
Morley,   J.,    "English   Men  of   Letters "  (Colvin).      New  York,    1887, 

Harper,  50-66  and  207-218. 
Keats,    J.,   "Letters    to    Fanny   Brawne."     London,   n.   d.,    Reeves  & 

Turner,  v.  index. 
Keats,  J.,  "  Letters  to  his  Family."     London,  1891,  Macmillan,  11-19. 


300  KEATS 

Houghton,  Lord,  "  Life  and  Letters  of   John  Keats."     London,  1867, 

Moxon,  v.  index. 
Dawson,  W.   J.,    "  Makers   of    Modern    English."     New  York,   1890, 

Whittaker,  48-60. 

Gilfillan,  G.,  "  Literary  Portraits."     London,  1845,  Tait,  I  :  372-385. 
Dennis,  J.,    "Heroes  of    Literature."     London,    1883,   J.    B.    Young, 

365-373. 

Owen,  F.  M.,  "John  Keats,  a  Study."  London,  1880,  Kegan  Paul  & 
Co.,  v.  index. 

Holmes,  O.  W.,  "  After  a  Lecture  on  Keats."  Boston,  1891,  hough- 
ton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  (Works),  I  :  226-227. 

Lang,  A.,  "  Letters  on  Literature."  London,  1889,  Longmans,  Green 
&  Co.,  55-67. 

Lester,  J.  W.,  "Criticisms."     London,  1853,  Longmans,  343-349. 

Dilke,  C.  W.,  "  Papers  of  a  Critic."     London,    1875,    Murray,  I  :  2-14. 

Century,  5:599-610  (E.  C.  Stedman);  Century,  28  (50) :  910-914 
(H.  Van  Dyke). 

Manhattan  Review,  3  :  489-498  (J.  Benton). 

Critic,  5  :  181-182  (J.  Benton). 

Academy,  24  :  407-408  (E.  Gosse). 

Forum,  21 :  420-424  (T.  W.  Higginson). 

Canadian  Monthly,  15  :  449-454  (E.  Fawcett). 

Scribner's  Monthly,  15  :  203-213  and  402-417  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 

Tail's  Magazine,  13  :  249-254  (De  Quincey). 

Appleton's  Magazine,  19  :  379-382  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  8:  37-41  (H.  T.  Tuckerman). 

Macmillan's  Magazine,  3  :  1-16  (D.  Masson);   58:  311-320  (S.  Colvin). 

Edinburgh  Review,  34:  203-213  (F.  Jeffrey). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Love  of  Beauty. — In  his  last  days  Keats  wrote  : 
"  If  I  should  die,  I  have  left  no  immortal  works  behind  me ; 
but  I  have  loved  the  principle  of  beauty  in  all  things." 

"  He  had  an  unerring  instinct  for  the  poetic  use  of  things, 
and  for  him  they  had  no  other  use.  We  are  apt  to  talk  of 
the  classic  renaissance  as  of  a  phenomenon  long  past,  nor 
ever  to  be  returned,  and  to  think  the  Greeks  and  Romans 
alone  had  the  mighty  magic  to  work  such  a  miracle.  To  me, 
one  of  the  most  interesting  aspects  of  Keats  is  that  in  him  we 


KEATS  301 

have  an  example  of  the  renaissance  going  on  almost  under 
our  own  eyes,  and  that  the  intellectual  ferment  was  in  him 
kindled  by  a  purely  English  leaven." — Lowell. 

"The  truth  is  that  the  yearning  passion  for  the  Beautiful 
which  was  with  Keats,  as  he  himself  truly  says,  the  master- 
passion,  is  not  a  passion  of  the  sensuous  or  sentimental  man, 
is  not  a  passion  of  the  sensuous  or  sentimental  poet.  It  is  an 
intellectual  and  spiritual  passion.  It  is,  as  he  again  says, 
1  the  mighty  abstract  idea  of  Beauty  in  all  things.' 
He  has  made  himself  remembered  and  remembered  as  no 
merely  sensuous  poet  could  be ;  and  he  has  done  it  by  having 
'  loved  the  principle  of  beauty  in  all  things.'  ...  By 
virtue  of  his  feeling  for  beauty  and  of  his  perception  of  the 
vital  connexion  of  beauty  with  truth,  Keats  accomplished  so 
much  in  poetry,  that  in  one  of  the  two  great  modes  by  which 
poetry  interprets,  in  the  faculty  of  naturalistic  interpretation, 
in  what  we  call  natural  magic,  he  ranks  with  Shakespeare. 
— Matthew  Arnold. 

"  Keats,  youthful  and  prodigal,  the  magician  of  unnum- 
bered beauties,  which  neither  author  nor  reader  can  think  of 
counting  or  assessing,  is  the  Keats  of  our  affection.  Mature 
him,  and  he  would  be  a  more  perfect  planner  and  executant, 
and  promoted  to  yet  loftier  office  among  the  immortals ;  but 
he  could  not  win  upon  us  more,  could  not  leave  us  a  more 
lovely  memory  nor  so  priceless  a  treasure  of  regret.  .  .  . 
The  susceptibility  which  is  visible  in  his  poems  to  all  forms 
of  beauty  and  delight,  and  the  unexhausted  inspiration  and 
spontaneous  flow  which  they  exhibit,  needed  nothing  but  one 
small  impulsion  to  rouse  him  and  start  him  on  his  course." 
—  W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  There  is  no  descent  into  his  soul  of  that  spirit  of  beauty, 
that  'awful  loveliness,'  before  whose  presence  the  poet's 
sensations  are  stilled,  and  in  whose  celebration  his  language 
is  adoration.  In  the  place  of  this,  there  is  an  all-absorbing 
relish  and  delicate  perception  of  beauty — a  kind  of  feeding 


302  KEATS 

on  '  nectared  sweets  ' — a  glow  of  delight  in  the  abandonment 
of  the  soul  to  soft  and  delicious  images,  framed  by  fancy  out 
of  rich  sensations.  '  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  '  is  del- 

icately beautiful,  and  perfect  of  its  kind.  .  .  .  The  sense 
of  luxury  is  its  predominant  characteristic,  and  though  full  of 
exquisite  fancies,  it  has  no  grand  imaginations.  .  .  . 
That  the  poetry  of  Keats  is  full  of  beauties,  that  it  evinces  a 
most  remarkable  richness  and  sensitiveness  of  imagination, 
is  cheerfully  acknowledged  by  everyone  who  reads 
poetry  without  having  his  fancy  and  imagination  shut  in  by 
prejudice."—  E.  P.  Whipple. 

11  In  what  other  English  poet  are  you  so  certain  of  never 
opening  a  page  without  lighting  upon  the  loveliest  imagery 
and  the  most  eloquent  expressions  ?  Name  one.  Com- 
pare any  succession  of  their  pages  at  random,  and  see  if  the 
young  poet  is  not  sure  to  present  his  stock  of  beauty  ;  crude, 
it  may  be,  in  many  instances ;  too  indiscriminate  in  general ; 
never,  perhaps,  thoroughly  perfect  in  cultivation ;  but  there 
it  is,  exquisite  of  its  kind  and  filling  envy  with  despair." 
'—Leigh  Hunt. 

"  Meek  child  of  earth  !   thou  wilt  not  shame 

The  sweet  dead  poet's  holy  name ; 

The  god  of  music  gave  thee  birth, 

Called  from  the  crimson-spotted  earth, 

Where,  sobbing  his  young  life  away, 

His  own  fair  Hyacinthus  lay. 

The  hyacinth  my  garden  gave 

Shall  lie  upon  that  Roman  grave  !  " 

—  O.   W.  Holmes. 

"Greater  lyrical  poetry  the  world  may  have  seen,  lovelier 
it  surely  has  never  seen,  nor  ever  can  it  possibly  see.  .  .  . 
The  faultless  force  and  the  profound  subtlety  of  this  deep  and 
cunning  instinct  for  the  absolute  expression  of  absolute  nat- 
ural beauty  can  hardly  be  questioned  or  overlooked  ;  and 
this  is  doubtless  the  one  main  distinctive  gift  or  power  which 


KEATS  303 

denotes  him  as  a  poet  among  all  his  equals,  and  gives  him 
right  to  a  rank  forever  beside  Coleridge  and  Shelley.  .  .  . 
Of  these  [Odes]  perhaps  the  two  nearest  to  absolute  perfec- 
tion, to  the  triumphant  achievement  and  accomplishment  of 
the  very  utmost  beauty  possible  to  human  words,  may  be  that 
to  Autumn  and  that  on  a  Grecian  Urn." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  He  lived  in  a  sort  of  ecstasy  during  no  small  portion  of 
these  solitary  hours,  when  he  would  call  the  wind  his  wife, 
the  stars  through  the  window-panes  his  children,  and  rest 
contented  in  the  abstract  idea  of  beauty  in  all  things.  .  .  . 
Although  to  Keats  the  worship  of  beauty  in  all  things  was 
the  essence  of  his  life,  and  the  delight  that  sprang  from  it  the 
essence  of  his  joy,  he  did  not  find  in  these  the  whole  of  life." 
—  G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  When  the  '  Endymion  '  comes  to  be  critically  considered, 
it  will  be  found  that  its  excellence  consists  in  its  clear  com- 
prehension of  that  ancient  spirit  of  beauty,  to  which  Keats's 
outward  perceptions  so  excellently  ministered,  and  which  un- 
dertook to  ennoble  and  purify,  as  far  as  was  consistent  with 
their  physical  existence,  the  instinctive  desires  of  mankind." 
— Mary  Russell  Mitford. 

"  Keats  wrote  the  famous  sonnet  [on  Chapman's  Homer] 
and  struck  for  the  first  time  that  rich  and  mellow  note,  res- 
onant of  a  beauty  deeper  even  than  its  own  magical  cad-ence, 
heard  for  the  first  time  in  English  poetry.  The  sonnet  has 
an  amplitude  of  serene  beauty  which  makes  it  the  fitting  pre- 
lude of  Keats's  later  works.  ...  It  was  no  obvious  and 
superficial  beauty  which  mirrored  itself  in  his  soul  and  which 
he  was  to  give  back  line  for  line.  His  springs  were  in  the 
secret  places,  fed  by  the  spirit  of  God  and  discovered  alone 
by  those  who  hold  the  divining-rod  of  genius. 
'  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  ' — a  vision  of  beauty,  deep,  rich,  and 
glowing  as  one  of  those  dyed  windows  in  which  the  heart  of 
the  Middle  Ages  still  burns.  The  beauty  of  his  work  has  by 
strange  lack  of  insight  been  taken  as  evidence  of  its  defect  in 


304  KEATS 

range  and  depth.  It  is  not  beauty  of  form  and  color  alone 
which  gives  the  '  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  '  and  the  ode  'To 
Autumn  '  their  changeless  spell  ;  it  is  that  interior  beauty  of 
which  Keats  was  thinking  when  he  wrote  those  profound 
lines,  the  very  essence  of  his  creed :  '  Beauty  is  truth,  truth 
beauty,  that  is  all  ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to 
know.'  .  .  .  The  ode  '  To  Autumn  '  and  <  The  Eve  of 
St.  Agnes'  are  beautiful  to  the  very  heart;  they  are  not 
clothed  with  beauty ;  they  are  beauty  itself.  .  .  .  His 
soul  was  in  contact  with  the  soul  of  things,  not  with  their 
surface  beauty." — H.  W.  Mabie. 

11  What  shall  I  say  of  '  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes? '  What, 
indeed,  can  I  say  but  that  it  is  the  most  exquisite,  the  most 
perfect  poem  in  the  world.  It  is  all  innocence,  all  purity, 
all  music,  all  picture,  all  delight,  and  all  beauty." — R.  H. 
Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Full  on  this  casement  shone  the  wintry  moon, 

And  threw  warm  gules  on  Madeline's  fair  breast, 
As  down  she  knelt  for  heaven's  grace  and  boon  ; 

Rose-bloom  fell  on  her  hands,  together  prest, 

And  on  her  silver  cross  soft  amethyst, 
And  on  her  hair  a  glory,  like  a  saint  : 

She  seemed  a  splendid  angel,  newly-drest, 
Save  wings,  for  Heaven." — The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes. 

"  When  old  age  shall  this  generation  waste, 

Thou  shalt  remain,  in  midst  of  other  woe 
Than  ours,  a  friend  to  man,  to  whom  thou  say'st, 
*  Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty,' — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

—  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn. 

"  A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  forever : 
Its  loveliness  increases  ;  it  will  never 
Piiss  into  nothingness  ;  but  still  will  keep 
A  bower  quiet  for  us,  and  a  sleep 


KEATS  3O5 

Full  of  sweet  dreams  and  health  and  quiet  breathing. 

Therefore,  on  every  morrow,  are  we  wreathing 

A  flowery  band  to  bind  us  to  the  earth, 

Spite  of  despondence,  of  the  inhuman  dearth 

Of  noble  natures,  of  the  gloomy  days, 

Of  all  the  unhealthy  and  o'er-darken'd  ways 

Made  for  our  searching  :  yes,  in  spite  of  all, 

Some  shape  of  beauty  moves  away  the  pall 

From  our  dark  spirits.     Such  the  sun,  the  moon, 

Trees  old  and  young,  sprouting  a  shady  boon 

For  simple  sheep;  and  such  are  daffodils 

With  the  green  world  they  live  in." — Endymion. 


L Delicate  Fancy— Sympathetic  Imagination. — 
its  certainly  had  more  of  the  penetrative  and  sympa- 
thetic imagination  which  belongs  to  the  poet,  of  that  imagina- 
tion which  identifies  itself  with  the  momentary  object  of  its 
contemplation,  than  any  man  of  these  later  days.  It  is  not 
merely  that  he  has  studied  the  Elizabethans  and  caught  their 
turn  of  thought,  but  that  he  really  sees  things  with  their  sov- 
ereign eye  and  feels  them  with  their  electrified  senses.  His 
imagination  was  his  bliss  and  bane." — Lowell. 

"Keats  was  born  a  poet  of  the  most  poetical  kind.  All 
his  feelings  came  to  him  through  a  poetical  medium  or  were 
speedily  colored  by  it.  He  enjoyed  a  jest  as  heartily  as  any 
one,  and  sympathized  with  the  lowliest  commonplace ;  but 
the  next  minute  his  thoughts  were  in  a  garden  of  enchant- 
ment, with  nymphs  and  fauns  and  shapes  of  exalted  humanity. 
It  might  be  said  of  him  that  he  never  beheld  an  oak-tree 
without  seeing  the  Dryad." — Leigh  Hunt. 

11  They  [his  poems]  are  flushed  all  over  with  the  rich  lights 
of  fancy  and  so  colored  and  bestrewn  with  the  flowers  of 
poetry  that  even  while  perplexed  and  bewildered  in  their 
labyrinths,  it  is  impossible  to  resist  the  intoxication  of  their 
sweetness  or  to  shut  our  hearts  to  the  enchantments  they 
so  lavishly  present.  .  .  .  Without  much  incident  or 


306  KEATS 

many  characters,  and  with  little  wit,  wisdom,  or  arrange- 
ment, a  number  of  bright  pictures  are  presented  to  the 
imagination  and  a  fine  feeling  expressed  of  those  mysterious 
relations  by  which  visible  external  things  are  assimilated  with 
inward  thoughts  and  emotions  and  become  the  images  and 
exponents  of  all  passions  and  affections." — Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  Keats  has  come  to  his  own,  and  it  was  not  the  surgeon's 
shop  ;  it  was  the  great  world  of  the  imagination,  in  the  power 
of  realizing  which  to  eyes  less  penetrating  and  to  minds  less 
sensitive  he  was  to  be  without  a  master  so  far  as  time  and 
growth  were  given  him.  .  .  .  How  deep  was  the  loveli- 
ness of  that  early  putting  forth  of  the  young  imagination  !  It 
was  no  delicate  fancy,  no  light  touch  of  skill,  no  precocious 
brightness  of  spirit,  which  Keats  gave  the  world  :  it  was  pure 
imagination,  that  rarest  and  most  precious  because  most  cre- 
ative of  gifts. — H.  W.  Mabie. 

"  Here  we  come  to  one  of  the  most  intrinsic  properties 
of  Keats's  poetry.  He  is  a  master  of  imagination  in 
verbal  form  :  he  gifts  us  with  things  so  finely  and  magic- 
ally said  as  to  convey  an  imaginative  impression." — W.  M. 
Rossetti. 

"  With  what  skill  he  had  learned  to  call  up  a  picture  in  all 
its  distinctness  of  form  and  color  imagination,  is  best  seen  in 
the  opening  stanzas  of  'St.  Agnes'  Eve,'  and  in  the  unri- 
valled description  of  the  painted  window  in  the  same  poem." 
—  W.  J.  Courthope. 

11  In  him  an  imagination, and  fancy  of  much  natural  capac- 
ity were  lodged  in  a  frame  too  weak  to  sustain  the  shocks  of 
life.  ...  In  his  later  works  the  imagination  of  Keats 
was  somewhat  released  from  the  thraldom  of  sensation,  and 
evinced  more  independent  power.  The  *  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  ' 
is  delicately  beautiful  and  perfect  of  its  kind  ;  but  it  is  not 
poetry  of  the  highest  order.  The  sense  of  luxury  is  its  pre- 
dominant characteristic,  and  though  full  of  exquisite  fancies, 
it  has  no  grand  imaginations." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


KEATS  307 

"  What  we  independently  know  enables  us  to  say  that  it 
was  pre-eminently  as  a  poet  that  he  was  fitted  to  be  dis- 
tinguished. He  was  constitutionally  a  poet,  one  of  those 
minds  in  whom,  to  speak  generally,  imagination  or  ideality 
is  the  sovereign  faculty." — David  Masson. 

"  Fancy  rather  than  form,  sentiment  rather  than  art,  pre- 
dominate."— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  doors  all  looked  as  if  they  oped  themselves, 
The  windows  as  if  latched  by  fays  and  elves, 
And  from  them  comes  a  silver  flash  of  light, 
As  from  the  westward  of  a  summer's  night  ; 
Or  like  a  beauteous  woman's  large  blue  eyes 
Gone  mad  through  olden  songs  and  poesies." 

— Re  m  in  iscences. 

"  Yes,  I  will  be  thy  priest,  and  build  a  fane, 
In  some  untrodden  region  of  my  mind, 
Where  branched  thoughts,  new-grown  with  pleasant  pain, 

Instead  of  pines  shall  murmur  in  the  wind  : 
Far,  far  around  shall  those  dark-cluster'd  trees 
Fledge  the  wild-ridged  mountains  steep  by  steep  ; 
And  there  by  zephyrs,  streams,  and  birds  and  bees, 
The  moss-lain  Dryads  shall  be  lulled  to  sleep." 

— Ode  to  Psyche. 

11  Here  are  sweet  peas,  on  tiptoe  for  a  flight, 
With  wings  of  gentle  flush  o'er  delicate  white, 
And  taper  fingers  catching  at  all  things, 
To  bind  them  all  about  with  tiny  rings." 

—I  Stood  Tiptoe  Upon  a  Little  Hill. 

3.  Exuberant  Imagery. — "  Keats's  early  poetry,  in- 
deed, partook  plentifully  of  the  exuberance  of  youth.     .     .     , 


308  KEATS 

His  region  is  a  wilderness  of  sweets — flowers  of  all  hue  and 
weeds  of  glorious  feature." — Leigh  Hunt. 

11  The  great  distinction  between  him  and  these  divine  au- 
thors [Jonson  and  Milton]  is,  that  imagination  in  them  is  sub- 
ordinate to  reason  and  judgment,  while,  with  him,  it  is  para- 
mount and  supreme.  .  .  .  His  ornaments  are  poured  out 
without  measure  or  restraint  and  with  no  apparent  design  but 
to  unburden  the  breast  of  the  author,  and  give  vent  to  the 
overflowing  vein  of  his  fancy.  .  .  .  The  thin  and  scanty 
tissue  of  his  story  is  merely  the  light  frame- work  on  which  his 
wreaths  are  suspended  ;  and  while  his  imaginations  go  ram- 
bling and  entangling  themselves  everywhere,  like  wild  honey- 
suckles, all  idea  of  sober  reason  and  plan  and  consistency  is  ut- 
terly forgotten,  and  we  are  strangled  in  their  waste  of  fertility. 
A  great  part  of  the  work  is  written  in  the  strongest  and  most 
fantastical  manner  that  can  be  imagined.  It  seems  as  if  the 
author  had  ventured  everything  that  occurred  to  him  in  the 
shape  of  a  glittering  image  or  striking  expression — taken  the 
first  word  that  presented  itself  to  make  up  a  rhyme  and  then 
made  that  word  the  germ  of  a  new  cluster  of  images — a  hint 
for  a  new  excursion  of  fancy — and  so  wandered  on,  equally 
forgetful  whence  he  came  and  heedless  whither  he  was  going, 
till  he  had  covered  his  pages  with  an  interminable  arabesque 
of  connected  and  incongruous  figures,  that  multiplied  as 
they  extended,  and  were  only  harmonized  by  the  brightness 
of  their  tints  and  the  graces  of  their  forms." — Francis 
Jefrey. 

"  Happy  the  young  poet  who  has  the  saving  fault  of  exuber- 
ance, if  he  have  also  the  shaping  faculty  that  sooner  or  later 
will  amend  it." — Lowell. 

11  The  spirit  of  art  was  always  vividly  near  and  precious  to 
Keats.  He  fashioned  it  exuberantly  into  a  thousand  shapes, 
now  of  gem-like  exquisiteness,  now  mere  slight  or  showy  trin- 
kets ;  and  of  these  the  scrupulous  taste  will  even  pronounce  the 
cheapest,  and  rightly  pronounce  them,  to  be  trumpery.  Still 


KEATS  309 

there  is  the  feeling  of  art,  however  provoking  its  masquerade." 
—  W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  Since  Spenser,  Keats  is  the  most  poetical  of  poets,  be- 
cause he  saw  with  the  imagination ;  and  what  he  saw  flashed 
into  images,  figures,  metaphors — the  fresh  and  glowing  speech 
of  poetry.  .  .  .  ['  Endymion  ']  has  the  freshness  of  feel- 
ing and  perception,  the  glow  of  imagination,  the  profusion 
and  riot  of  imagery  .  .  .  which  one  would  expect 
from  so  immature  a  mind.  ...  Its  profusion  of  imagery 
.  .  .  is  the  fault  of  excessive  romanticism." — H.  W. 
Mabie. 

"  He  kept  aloof  from  opinion,  doctrine,  controversy,  as 
by  a  natural  instinct ;  he  was  most  at  home  in  the  world 
of  sense  and  imagery,  where  it  was  his  pleasure  to  weave 
forth  phantasies ;  and  if  his  intelligence  did  now  and  then 
indulge  in  a  discursive  flight,  it  was  by  way  of  exercise, 
or  because  opinions,  doctrines,  and  controversies  may  be 
considered  as  facts  and  therefore  as  materials  to  be  worked 
into  poetic  language  .  .  .  He  manifests  a  bewildering 
plentitude  of  luxuriant  invention  [in  (  Endymion  ']." — David 
Masson. 

"  The  '  Ode  to  Psyche  '  is  a  beautifully  wrought  specimen 
of  Keats's  jeweler's  workmanship,  of  his  power  of  seizing  on 
an  abstract  thought  and  chasing  it  with  fanciful  imagery." — 
W.  J.  Courthope. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thou  still  unravished  bride  of  quietness  ! 

Thou  foster-child  of  Silence  and  slow  Time, 
Sylvian  historian,  who  canst  thus  express 

A  flowery  tale  more  sweetly  than  our  rhyme  : 
What  leaf-fringed  legend  haunts  about  thy  shape 
Of  deities  or  mortals,  or  of  both, 
In  Tempe  or  the  dales  of  Arcady  ?  " 

—  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn. 


3IO  KEATS 

"  She  dwells  with  Beauty — Beauty  that  must  die  ; 

And  Joy,  whose  hand  is  ever  at  his  lips 
Bidding  adieu;  and  aching  Pleasure  nigh, 

Turning  to  poison  while  the  bee- mouth  sips  : 
Ay,  in  the  very  temple  of  Delight 

Veiled  Melancholy  has  her  sovran  shrine, 
Though  seen  of  none  save  him  whose  strenuous  tongue 

Can  burst  Joy's  grape  against  his  palate  fine  ; 
His  soul  shall  taste  the  sadness  of  her  might, 
And  be  among  her  cloudy  trophies  hung." 

— Ode  on  Melancholy. 

tl  O  magic  sleep  !  O  comfortable  bird, 

That  broodest  o'er  the  troubled  sea  of  the  mind 

Till  it  is  hushed  and  smooth !  O  unconfined 

Restraint !  imprisoned  liberty  !  great  key 

To  golden  palaces,  strange  minstrelsy, 

Fountains  grotesque,  new  trees,  bespangled  caves, 

Echoing  grottoes,  full  of  tumbling  waves 

And  moonlight ;  ay,  to  all  the  mazy  world 

Of  silvery  enchantment! — who,  upfurled 

Beneath  thy  drowsy  wing  a  triple  hour, 

But  renovates  and  lives  ?  " — Endymion. 


4.  Splendor  —  Magnificence.  —  "  His  fragment  of 
'  Hyperion  '  seems  actually  inspired  by  the  Titans,  and  is  as 
sublime  as  ^Eschylus." — Lord  Byron. 

"  ['  Hyperion  ']  presents  the  majesty,  the  austere  beauty, 
and  the  simplicity  of  Grecian  temples  enriched  with  Grecian 
sculpture." — De  Quincey. 

"  '  Hyperion,'  with  its  Titanic  opening  and  Doric  grandeur 
of  tone,  inviolate  from  first  to  last." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  We  see  also  incontestable  proof  of  the  greatness  and  purity 
of  his  poetic  gift  in  the  constant  return  towards  equilibrium 
and  repose  in  his  later  poems,  and  it  is  a  repose  always  lofty 
and  clear-aired,  like  that  of  the  eagle  balanced  in  incommuni- 
cable sunshine." — Lowell. 


KEATS  311 

"  Witness  the  <  Sonnet  on  Looking  into  Chapman's  Homer ' 
— epical  in  the  splendor  and  dignity  of  its  images,  and  ter- 
minating in  the  noblest  Greek  simplicity." — Leigh  Hunt. 
"  Another  splendor  on  his  mouth  alit, 

That  mouth  whence  it  was  wont  to  draw  the  breath 
Which  gave  it  strength  to  pierce  the  guarded  wit 

And  pass  into  the  panting  heart  beneath 
With  lightning  and  with  music." — Shelley. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  His  palace  bright, 

Bastioned  with  pyramids  of  glowing  gold, 
And  touched  with  shade  of  bronzed  obelisks 
Glared  a  blood-red  through  all  its  thousand  courts, 
Arches,  and  domes,  and  fiery  galleries  ; 
And  all  its  curtains  of  Aurorian  clouds 
Flush'd  angrily,  while  sometimes  eagles'  wings, 
Unseen  before  by  gods  or  wondering  men, 
Darken'd  the  place." — Hyperion. 

"  O  thou,  whose  mighty  palace  roof  doth  hang 
From  jagged  trunks,  and  overshadoweth 
Eternal  whispers,  glooms,  the  birth,  life,  death 
Of  unseen  flowers  in  heavy  peacefulness  ; 
Who  lovest  to  see  the  hamadryads  dress 
Their  ruffled  locks  where  meeting  hazels  darken, 
And  through  whole  solemn  hours  dost  sit,  and  harken." 

— Endymion. 

"  It  keeps  eternal  whisperings  around 

Desolate  shores,  and  with  its  mighty  swell 

Gluts  twice  ten  thousand  caverns,  till  the  spell 

Of  Hecate  leaves  them  their  old  shadowy  sound. 

Often  'tis  in  such  gentle  temper  found, 

That  scarcely  will  the  very  smallest  shell 

Be  moved  for  days  from  where  it  sometime  fell, 

When  last  the  winds  of  heaven  were  unbound. 


312  KEATS 

O  ye  who  have  your  eyeballs  vexed  and  tired, 

Feast  them  upon  the  vvideness  of  the  sea  ; 

O  ye  whose  ears  are  dimmed  with  uproar  rude, 

Or  fed  too  much  with  cloying  melody, — 

Sit  ye  near  some  old  cavern's  mouth  and  brood, 

Until  ye  start,  as  if  the  sea-nymphs  quired  !  " 

— On  the  Sea. 

5.  Deep  Pathos. — Near  the  close  of  his  short,  sad  life 
Keats  exclaims,  "  Oh,  that  something  fortunate  had  ever  hap- 
pened to  me  or  my  brothers — then  might  I  hope — but  despair 
is  forced  upon  me  as  a  habit."  Not  infrequently  in  his  poems 
we  find  traces  of  the  dark  cloud  that  overhung  all  his  days. 

"  The  very  sadness  of  his  lovely  odes,  «  To  a  Nightingale,' 
'On  a  Grecian  Urn,'  'To  Autumn,'  '  To  Psyche,'  is  the 
pleasant  melancholy  of  the  springtime  of  the  heart." — Henry 
Van  Dyke. 

"  I  will  only  say  of  '  Isabella '  that  no  English  poet  of  the 
period  of  whom  I  have  any  knowledge,  could  have  infused 
into  it  such  tenderness  and  pathos  as  Keats  has. 
There  is  an  indescribable  melancholy  about  this  poem  ['  There 
is  a  charm  in  footing  slow  '],  which  is  one  of  the  best  he  ever 
wrote." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"O  Pang-dowered  Poet,  whose  reverberant  lips 
And  heart-strung  lyre  awoke  the  moon's  eclipse." 

— D.  G.  Rossetti. 

"  '  Isabella,'  feeble  and  awkward  in  narrative  to  a  degree 
almost  incredible  in  a  student  of  Dryden  and  a  pupil  of  Leigh 
Hunt,  is  overcharged  with  episodical  effects  of  splendid  and 
pathetic  expression  beyond  the  reach  of  either." — A.  C. 
Swinburne. 

"  Melancholy  is  most  of  all  the  mark  he  set  upon  his  poetry 
— a  mark  which  has  been  copied  by  so  many  later  versifiers 
that  it  has  seemed  as  if  [it  were]  grief  and  pining." — C.  F. 
Richardson. 

"The  last  words  of  his  Most  wanderer  from  Arden  '  are 


KEATS 


313 


terrible  in  their  burden  of  agony ;  they  are  as  the  wail  of  one 
who  calls  across  a  waste  of  dead  water,  and  hears  only  his  own 
cry  return  to  him." — Hall  Caine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  That  I  might  drink,  and  leave  the  world  unseen, 
And  with  thee  fade  away  into  the  forest  dim ; 
Fade  far  away,  dissolve,  and  quite  forget 
What  thou  among  the  leaves  hast  never  known, 
The  weariness,  the  fever,  and  the  fret 
Here,  where  men  sit  and  hear  each  other  groan  ; 
Where  palsy  shakes  a  few  sad,  last  gray  hairs, 
Where  youth  grows  pale  and  spectre-thin,  and  dies  ; 
Where  but  to  think  is  to  be  full  of  sorrow, 
And  leaden-eyed  despairs  ; 
Where  beauty  cannot  keep  her  lustrous  eyes, 
Or  new  Love  pine  at  them  beyond  to-morrow." 

— Ode  to  a  Nightingale. 

"  When  by  my  solitary  hearth  I  sit, 

And  hateful  thoughts  enwrap  my  soul  in  gloom  ; 
When  no  fair. dreams  before  my  '  mind's  eye  '  flit, 

And  the  bare  heath  of  life  presents  no  bloom  ; 
Sweet  Hope  !  ethereal  balm  upon  me  shed, 
And  wave  thy  silver  pinions  o'er  my  head. 


When  e'er  the  fate  of  those  I  hold  most  dear 
Tells  to  my  fearful  breast  a  tale  of  sorrow, 

O  bright-eyed  Hope  my  morbid  fancy  cheer  ; 
Let  me  awhile  thy  brightest  comforts  borrow  : 

Thy  heaven-born  radiance  around  me  shed, 

And  wave  thy  silver  pinions  o'er  my  head  !  " 

—  To  Hope. 

"  Why  did  I  laugh  to-night  ?     No  voice  will  tell ; 

No  God,  no  Demon  of  severe  response, 

Deigns  to  reply  from  Heaven  or  from  Hell. 

Then  to  my  human  heart  I  turn  at  once. 


314  KEATS 

Heart !     Thou  and  I  are  here  sad  and  alone  ; 

1  say,  why  did  I  laugh  ?     O  mortal  pain  ! 
O  Darkness  !     Darkness  !  ever  must  I  moan, 

To  question  Heaven  and  Hell  and  Heart  in  vain. 
Why  did  I  laugh  ?     I  know  this  Being's  lease, 

My  fancy  to  its  utmost  blisses  spreads  ; 
Yet  would  I  on  this  very  midnight  cease, 

And  the  world's  gaudy  ensigns  see  in  shreds  ; 
Verse,  Fame,  and  Beauty  are  intense  indeed, 
But  Death  intenser — Death  is  Life's  high  meed." 

— Sonnet. 


\  Jb.  Mythological  Invention. — "  There  is  something 
i/very  curious,  too,  we  think,  in  the  way  in  which  he  has  dealt 
with  the  Pagan  mythology,  of  which  he  has  made  so  much 
use  in  his  poetry.  Instead  of  presenting  its  imaginary  persons 
under  the  trite  and  vulgar  traits  that  belong  to  them  in  the 
ordinary  systems,  little  more  is  borrowed  from  these  than  the 
general  conception  of  their  condition  and  relations  ;  and  an 
original  character  and  distinct  individuality  is  then  bestowed 
upon  them,  which  has  all  the  merit  of  invention  and  all  the 
grace  and  attraction  of  the  fictions  on  which  it  is  engrafted. 
The  ancients,  though  they  probably  did  not  stand  in  any 
great  awe  of  their  deities,  have  yet  abstained  very  much  from 
any  minute  or  dramatic  representation  of  their  feelings  and 
affections.  .  .  .  The  author  before  us,  however,  and 
some  of  his  contemporaries,  have  dealt  differently  with  the 
subject ;  and,  sheltering  the  violence  of  the  fiction  under  the 
ancient  traditionary  fable,  have  in  reality  created  and  imagined 
an  entire  new  set  of  characters,  and  have  brought  closely  and 
minutely  before  us  the  loves  and  sorrows  and  perplexities  of 
beings  with  whose  names  and  supernatural  attributes  we  had 
long  been  familiar,  without  any  sense  or  feeling  of  their  per- 
sonal character. ' '  — Francis  Jeffrey. 

"Selecting,  as  in   'Endymion,'  a  legend  of  the  Grecian 
mythology,  or,  as  in  'Isabella,  or  the  Pot  of  Basil,'  a  story 


KEATS  3  I  5 

of  Boccaccio,  or,  as  in  '  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,'  the  hint  of  a 
Middle  Age  superstition,  or,  as  in  '  Lamia,'  a  story  of  Greek 
witchcraft,  he  sets  himself  to  weave  out  the  little  text  of  sub- 
stance so  given  into  a  linked  succession  of  imaginary  move- 
ments and  incidents  taking  place  in  the  dim  lights  of  ideal 
scenery." — David  Masson. 

11  No  English  poet  since  Shakespeare  was  ever  so  possessed 
by  the  lovely  mythology  of  Greece,  which  here  discloses 
itself  in  the  freshness  and  fulness  of  forest  life  and  feeling." 
—R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"The  manner  in  which  Keats  set  about  relating  the  Greek 
story  ['  Endymion  '],  as  he  had  thus  conceived  it,  was  as  far 
from  being  a  Greek  or  '  classical '  manner  as  possible.  .  . 
But  though  Keats  sees  the  Greek  world  from  afar,  he  sees  it 
truly.  The  Greek  touch  is  not  his,  but  in  his  own  rich  and 
decorated  English  way  he  writes  with  a  sure  insight  into  the 
vital  meaning  of  Greek  ideas.  For  the  story  of  the  war  of 
the  Titans  and  Olympians  [in  «  Hyperion  ']  he  had  nothing 
to  guide  him  except  scraps  from  the  ancient  writers,  princi- 
pally Hesiod,  as  retailed  by  the  compilers  of  classical  diction- 
aries ;  and  from  the  scholar's  point  of  view  his  version,  we 
can  see,  would  at  many  points  have  been  arbitrary,  mixing 
up  Latin  conceptions  and  nomenclature  with  Greek,  and  in- 
troducing much  new  matter  of  his  own  invention.  But  as  to 
the  essential  meaning  of  that  warfare  and  its  results 
it  could  not  possibly  be  divined  more  truly,  or  illustrated  with 
more  beauty  and  force,  than  by  Keats  in  the  speech  of 
Oceanus  in  the  Second  Book." — Sidney  Colvin. 

"  In  '  Endymion  '  the  lines  of  the  old  Greek  story  are  com- 
pletely lost,  and  the  subject  becomes  merely  a  vehicle  for  the 
expression  of  the  poet's  own  individual  moods  and  caprices 
of  fancy." — W.  J.  Court  hope. 


3l6  KEATS 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Until  at  length  old  Saturn  lifted  up 

His  faded  eyes,  and  saw  his  kingdom  gone, 

And  all  the  gloom  and  sorrow  of  the  place, 

And  that  fair  kneeling  goddess  ;  and  then  spake 

As  with  a  palsied  tongue,  and  while  his  beard 

Shook  horrid  with  such  aspen  malady  : 

1  O  tender  spouse  of  gold  Hyperion, 

Thea,  I  feel  thee  ere  I  see  thy  face  ; 

Look  up,  and  let  me  see  our  doom  in  it ; 

Look  up,  and  tell  me  if  this  feeble  shape 

Is  Saturn's  ;  tell  me,  if  thou  hear'st  the  voice 

Of  Saturn  ;  tell  me,  if  this  wrinkling  brow, 

Naked  and  bare  of  its  great  diadem, 

Peers  like  the  front  of  Saturn.'  " — Hyperion. 

"  Upon  a  time  before  the  faery  broods 
Drove  Nymph  and  Satyr  from  the  prosperous  woods, 
Before  King  Oberon's  bright  diadem, 
Sceptre,  and  mantle,  clasped  with  dewy  gem, 
Frighted  away  the  Dryads  and  the  Fauns 
From  rushes  green,  and  brakes,  and  cow-slip'd  lawns, 
The  ever-smitten  Hermes  empty  left 
His  golden  throne,  bent  warm  on  amprous  theft  : 
From  high  Olympus  had  he  stolen  light, 
On  this  side  of  Jove's  clouds,  to  escape  the  sight 
Of  his  great  summoner,  and  made  retreat 
Into  a  forest  on  the  shores  of  Crete. 
For  somewhere  in  that  sacred  island  dwelt 
A  nymph,  to  whom  all  hoofed  satyrs  knelt  ; 
At  whose  white  feet  the  languid  Titans  poured 
Pearls,  while  on  land  they  withered  and  adored." 

— Lamia. 

"  What  first  inspired  a  bard  of  old  to  sing 
Narcissus  pining  o'er  the  untainted  spring  ? 
In  some  delicious  ramble,  he  had  found 
A  little  space  with  boughs  all  woven  round ; 


KEATS  317 

And  in  the  midst  of  all  a  clearer  pool 

Than  e'er  reflected  in  its  pleasant  cool 

The  blue  sky ;  here  and  there  serenely  peeping 

Through  tendril  wreaths  fantastically  creeping  ; 

And  on  the  bank  a  lonely  flower  he  spied, 

A  meek  and  forlorn  flower,  with  naught  of  pride, 

Drooping  its  beauty  o'er  the  watery  clearness, 

To  woo  its  own  sad  image  into  nearness  : 

Deaf  to  light  Zephyrus,  it  would  not  move  ; 

But  still  would  seem  to  droop,  to  pine,  to  love. 

So  while  the  poet  stood  in  this  sweet  spot, 

Some  fainter  gleamings  o'er  his  fancy  shot ; 

Nor  was  it  long  ere  he  had  told  the  tale 

Of  young  Narcissus  and  sad  Echo's  Vale." 

/  Stood  Tiptoe  Upon  a  Little  Hill. 

7.  Vagueness— Mysticism.— [In  the  "  Ode  to  a  Night- 
ingale "]  "  You  do  not  know  what  the  house  is,  or  where,  nor 
who  the  bird.  Perhaps  a  king  himself.  But  you  see  the 
window  open  on  the  perilous  sea,  and  hear  the  voice  from  out 
the  tree  in  which  it  is  nested,  sending  its  warble  over  the 
foam.  The  whole  is  at  once  vague  and  particular,  full  of 
mysterious  life.  You  see  nobody,  though  something  is  heard ; 
and  you  know  not  what  of  beauty  or  wickedness  is  to  come 
over  that  sea." — Leigh  Hunt. 

"  The  modes  of  existence  in  the  two  parties  to  the  love- 
fable  of  '  Endymion,'  their  relation  to  each  other  and  to  us, 
their  prospects  finally,  and  the  obstacles  to  the  instant  realiza- 
tion of  these  prospects — all  these  things  are  more  vague  and 
incomprehensible  than  the  reveries  of  an  oyster.  .  .  . 
The  very  midsummer  madness  of  affectation,  of  false  vapory 
sentiment,  and  of  fantastic  effeminacy,  seemed  to  me  com- 
bined in  Keats's  'Endymion'  when  I  first  saw  it." — De 
Quincey. 

"  Besides  the  riot  and  extravagance  of  his  fancy,  the  scope 
and  substance  of  Mr.  Keats's  poetry  is  rather  too  dreamy  and 
abstracted  to  excite  the  strongest  interest  or  to  sustain  the  at- 


3l8  KEATS 

tention  through  a  work  of  any  great  compass  or  extent.  He 
deals  too  much  with  shadowy  and  incomprehensible  beings, 
and  is  too  constantly  rapt  into  an  extra-mundane  Elysium,  to 
command  a  lasting  interest  with  ordinary  mortals." — Francis 
Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  Hermes  once  took  to  his  feathers  light, 

When  lulled  Argus,  baffled,  swooned  and  slept, 
So  on  a  Delphic  reed,  my  idle  spright, 

So  played,  so  charmed,  so  conquered,  so  bereft 
The  dragon-world  of  all  its  hundred  eyes, 

And  seeing  it  asleep,  so  fled  away, 
Not  to  pure  Ida  with  its  snow-cold  skies, 

Nor  unto  Tempe,  where  Jove  grieved  a  day, 
But  to  that  second  circle  of  sad  Hell, 

Where  in  the  gust,  the  whirlwind,  and  the  flaw 
Of  rain  and  hailstones,  lovers  need  not  tell 

Their  sorrows — pale  were  the  sweet  lips  I  saw, 
Pale  were  the  lips  I  kissed,  the  fair  form 

I  floated  with  about  that  melancholy  storm." 

— On  a  Dream. 

"  I  met  a  lady  in  the  meads, 
Full  beautiful — a  faery's  child  ; 
Her  hair  was  long,  her  foot  was  light, 
And  her  eyes  were  wild. 


I  set  her  on  my  pacing  steed, 
And  nothing  else  saw  all  day  long, 
For  side-long  would  she  bend,  and  sing 
A  faery  song. 

She  took  me  to  her  elfin  grot, 
And  there  she  wept,  and  sighed  full  sore, 
And  there  I  shut  her  wild,  wild  eyes 
With  kisses  four, 


KEATS  319 

And  there  she  lulled  me  asleep 

And  there  I  dream'd — Ah  !  woe  betide  ! 

The  latest  dream  I  ever  dream'd 

On  the  cold  hill's  side. 

They  cried — '  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci 

Hath  thee  in  thrall !  ' 

I  saw  their  starved  lips  in  the  gloam, 

With  horrid  warning  gaped  wide, 

And  I  awoke  and  found  me  here, 

On  the  cold  hill's  side." 

— La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci. 

"  Strange  ministrant  of  undescribed  sounds, 
That  come  a-swooning  over  hollow  grounds, 
And  wither  drearily  on  barren  moors  : 
Dread  opener  of  mysterious  doors 
Leading  to  universal  knowledge — see, 
Great  son  of  Dryope 

The  many  that  are  come  to  pay  their  vows 
With  leaves  about  their  brows  !  " — Endymion. 

8.  Sensitiveness — Sensuousness. — Of  all  our  great 
writers,  Keats  is  the  most  sensitive.  While  this  characteristic, 
when  carried  to  an  extreme,  has  subjected  him  to  much  severe 
criticism,  it  is  also  the  secret  of  his  rare  power ;  for,  as  Lowell 
justly  says,  ' '  A  man  cannot  have  a  sensuous  nature  and  be 
pachydermatous  at  the  same  time  ;  and  if  he  be  imaginative 
as  well  as  sensuous,  he  suffers  just  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
of  his  imagination."  This  quality  of  Keats's  style  appears 
especially  in  his  letters  and  other  writings  composed  shortly 
before  his  untimely  death.  Speaking  of  the  lady  to  whom  he 
was  so  passionately  attached,  he  says,  "  Oh  that  I  could  be 
buried  near  where  she  lives  !  I  am  afraid  to  write  to  her, 
to  receive  a  letter  from  her — to  see  her  hand-writing  would 
break  my  heart."  And  a  little  later,  after  lying  peacefully 
awhile,  he  said  to  a  friend,  "1  can  feel  the  flowers  growing 
over  me." 


320  KEATS 

"  Every  one  of  Keats's  poems  was  a  sacrifice  of  vitality; 
.  .  .  even  yet,  as  we  turn  the  leaves,  they  seem  to  warm 
and  thrill  our  fingers  with  the  flush  of  his  fine  senses  and  the 
flutter  of  his  electrical  nerves.  .  .  .  Three  men,  almost 
contemporaneous  with  each  other,  Wordsworth,  Keats,  and 
Byron,  were  the  great  means  of  bringing  back  English  poetry 
from  the  sandy  deserts  of  rhetoric  and  recovering  for  her 
her  triple  inheritance  of  simplicity,  sensuousness,  and  passion. 

.  •.  Without  losing  its  sensuousness,  his  poetry  refined 
itself  and  grew  more  inward,  and  the  sensational  was  elevated 
into  the  typical  by  the  control  of  that  fine  sense  which  under- 
lies the  senses  and  is  the  spirit  of  them." — Lowell. 

"  Keats  has,  above  all,  a  sense  of  what  is  pleasurable  and 
open  in  the  life  of  nature :  for  him  she  is  the  Alma  Parens  : 
his  expression  is,  therefore,  more  than  Guerin's,  something 
genial,  outward,  and  sensuous.  No  one  can  question  the 
eminency,  in  Keats's  poetry,  of  the  quality  of  sensuousness. 
Keats  as  a  poet  is  abundantly  and  enchantingly  sensuous; 
the  question  with  some  people  will  be  whether  he  is  anything 
else.  Many  things  may  be  brought  forward  to  show  him  as 
under  the  fascination  and  sole  dominion  of  sense  and  desir- 
ing nothing  better.  There  is  the  exclamation  in  one  of 
his  letters  :  '  Oh  for  a  life  of  sensations  rather  than  of 
thoughts  !  '  .  .  .  [In  his  love  letters]  we  have  the  tone, 
or  rather  the  entire  want  of  tone,  the  abandonment  of  all 
reticence  and  all  dignity,  of  the  mere  sensuous  man,  of  the 
man  who  is  passion's  slave.  .  .  .  This  sensuous  strain 
Keats  had,  and  a  man  of  his  poetic  power  could  not,  what- 
ever his  strain,  but  show  his  talent  in  it.  But  he  has  some- 
thing more  and  something  better.  We  who  believe  Keats  to 
have  been,  by  his  promise,  at  any  rate,  if  not  fully  by  his 
performance,  one  of  the  very  greatest  of  English  poets,  and 
who  believe  also  that  a  merely  sensuous  man  cannot  either  by 
promise  or  performance  be  a  very  great  poet,  because  poetry 
interprets  life,  and  so  large  and  noble  a  part  of  life  is  outside 


KEATS  321 

such  a  man's  ken — we  cannot  but  look  for  signs  in  him  of 
something  more  than  sensuousness,  for  signs  of  character  and 
virtue.  There  is  Haydon's  story  of  him,  how  he  once 
covered  his  tongue  and  throat  as  far  as  he  could  reach  with 
Cayenne  pepper,  in  order  to  appreciate  the  delicious  coldness 
of  claret  in  all  its  glory — his  own  expression." — Matthew 
Arnold. 

"  In  him  an  imagination  and  fancy  of  much  natural  capac- 
ity were  lodged  in  a  frame  too  weak  to  sustain  the  shocks  of 
life  and  too  sensitive  for  the  development  of  high  and  sturdy 
thought.  .  .  .  His  nature  was  essentially  sensitive.  Far 
from  being  independent  of  others,  he  held  his  life  at  the 
mercy  of  others. 

"  In  his  early  poems  Keats  appears  as  a  kind  of  youthful 
Spenser,  without  Spenser's  moral  sense  or  judgment.  His 
soul  floats  in  a  '  sea  of  rich  and  ripe  sensations.'  The  odors, 
forms,  sounds,  and  colors  of  nature  take  him  captive.  There 
is  little  reaction  of  his  mind  on  his  sensations.  He  grows 
faint  and  languid  with  the  excess  of  light  and  loveliness  which 
stream  into  his  soul.  ...  All  that  is  mighty  in  nature 
and  man  is  too  apt  to  be  sicklied  o'er  with  fanciful  sentimen- 
talities. The  gods  are  transformed  into  green  girls,  and  the 
sublime  and  beautiful  turned  to  favor  and  prettiness.  Every- 
thing is  luscious,  sweet,  dainty,  and  debilitating,  in  his  sense 
of  love  and  beauty.  There  is  no  descent  into  his  soul  of  that 
spirit  of  Beauty,  that  <  awful  loveliness,'  before  whose  presence 
the  poet's  sensations  are  stilled,  and  in  whose  celebration  his 
language  is  adoration.  In  the  place  of  this  there  is  an  all- 
absorbing  relish  and  delicate  perception  of  beauties — a  kind 
of  feeding  on  '  nectared  sweets' — a  glow  of  delight  in  the 
abandonment  of  the  soul  to  soft  and  delicious  images,  framed 
by  fancy  out  of  rich  sensations.  It  is  rather  reverie  than 
inspiration.  .  .  .  This  bewildering  sense  of  physical 
pleasure  was  generally  predominant  in  Keats.  .  .  .  •  A 
keen  sensitiveness  of  perception  doubtless  characterizes  all 

21 


322  KEATS 

great  poets.  Keats  is  supposed  to  have  had  more  of  this 
power,  because  he  lacked  other  and  equally  important  powers 
or  because  it  obtained  over  them  such  a  mastery.  .  .  . 
The  confounding  of  fine  sensations  with  moral  sense,  the 
pleasurable  with  the  right,  is  a  great  defect  of  Keats's  poetry. 

"The  most  obvious  characteristic  of  Keats's  poetry  is 
certainly  its  abundant  sensuousness.  Some  of  his  finest  little 
poems  are  all  but  literally  lyrics  of  the  sensuous,  embodi- 
ments of  the  feelings  of  ennui,  fatigue,  physical  languor,  and 
the  like,  in  tissues  of  fancied  circumstances  and  sensation. 
In  following  him  in  these  luxurious  excursions  into  a 
world  of  ideal  nature  and  life,  we  see  his  imagination  wing- 
ing about,  as  if  it  were  his  disembodied  senses  hovering  insect- 
like  in  one  humming  group,  all  keeping  together  in  harmony 
at  the  bidding  of  a  higher  intellectual  power  and  yet  each  cater- 
ing for  itself  in  that  species  of  circumstance  which  is  its 
peculiar  food.  ...  I  believe  that  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable characteristics  of  Keats  is  the  universality  of  his 
sensuousness." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  At  the  foundation  of  the  character  of  Keats  lay  an  extra- 
ordinary keenness  of  all  the  bodily  sensibilities  and  the  mental 
sensibilities  which  depend  upon  them.  He  led,  in  great 
part,  a  life  of  passive  sensation,  of  pleasure  and  pain  through 
the  senses.  ...  He  possessed,  in  short,  simply  in  virtue 
of  his  organization,  a  rich  intellectual  foundation  of  that  kind 
which  consists  of  notions  furnished  directly  by  sensations  and 
of  a  corresponding  stock  of  names  and  terms.  Even  had  he 
remained  without  education,  his  natural  vocabulary  of  words 
for  all  the  varieties  of  thrills,  tastes,  odors,  sounds,  colors, 
and  tactual  perceptions,  would  have  been  unusually  precise 
and  extensive.  As  it  was,  this  native  capacity  for  keen  and 
abundant  sensation  was  developed,  educated,  and  har- 
monized by  the  influences  of  reading,  intellectual  conversa- 
tion, and  more  or  less  laborious  thought,  into  that  richer  and 
more  cultivated  sensuousness,  which,  under  the  name  of  sensi- 


KEATS  323 

bility  to  natural  beauty,  is  an  accepted  requisite  in  the  con- 
stitution of  painters  and  poets." — David  Masson. 

"Sensuous  Keats  was,  as  every  poet  whose  inspiration  is 
direct  from  heaven  should  be.  .  .  .  Quick  susceptibility 
to  sensuous  impressions  of  every  kind  may  be  plentifully 
illustrated  by  opening  almost  at  random  in  his  works.  .  .  . 
The  extraordinary  beauty  and  facility  of  his  descriptions  of 
sensation  and  his  addiction  to  climax  and  point  in  his  prose 
have  made  it  easy  to  quote  phrases  which  seem  to  show  that 
he  was  unduly  attached  to  delights  of  mere  sense." — G.  E. 
Woodberry. 

"  Somewhat  too  sensually  sensitive  he  may  have  been,  but 
the  nature  of  the  man  was,  as  far  as  was  the  quality  of  the  poet, 
above  the  pitiful  level  of  a  creature  whose  soul  could  let  itself 
be  snuffed  out  by  an  article." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  'The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,'  pure  and  passionate,  surprising 
by  its  fine  excess  of  color  and  melody,  sensuous  in  every  line, 
yet  free  from  the  slightest  taint  of  sensuality,  is  unforgettable 
and  unsurpassable  as  the  dream  of  first  love." — Henry  Van 
Dyke. 

"Viewing  all  these,  .  .  .  the  predominant  quality 
which  we  trace  in  them  [his  poems]  is  an  extreme  suscepti- 
bility to  delight.  .  .  .  The  emotion  throughout  is  the 
emotion  of  beauty :  beauty  intensely  perceived,  intensely 
loved.  .  .  .  He  was  a  man  of  perception  rather  than  of 
contemplation  or  speculation.  .  .  .  He  saw  so  far  and 
so  keenly  into  the  sensuous  as  to  be  penetrated  with  the 
sentiment  which,  to  a  healthy  and  large  nature,  is  its  insepa- 
rable outcome.  ...  If  the  sensuous  was  his  atmosphere, 
the  breathing  apparatus  with  which  he  respired  it  was  senti- 
ment. The  susceptibility  is  visible  in  his  poems  to  all  forms 
of  beauty  and  delight." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"Keats  was  sensuous,  .  .  .  but  the  richness  of  his 
diction  carries  with  it  the  impression  of  immense  intellect- 
ual resource.  .  .  .  He  was  no  idle  singer  of  sensuous 


324  KEATS 

moods,  he  was  a  resolute  and  clear -sigh  ted  pursuer  of  the 
Ideal.  ...  In  that  sensuousness  lay  the  promise  of  a 
prime  which,  had  it  come,  might  have  recalled  the  noontide 
of  Spenser  and  Shakespeare." — H.  W.  Mabie. 

"  His  sensibility,  sharpened  by  mortal  illness,  tended  to 
a  morbid  excess.  .  .  .  Extreme  sensibility  struggled  in 
him  with  a  great  understanding." — Leigh  Hunt. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

O  known  Unknown,  from  whom  my  being  sips 

Such  darling  essence,  wherefore  may  I  not 

Be  ever  in  these  arms  ?  in  this  sweet  spot 

Pillow  my  chin  forever  ?  ever  press 

These  toying  hands  and  kiss  their  smooth  excess  ? 

Why  not  forever  and  forever  feel 

That  breath  about  my  eyes  ?  " — Endymion. 

"  Give  me  a  golden  pen,  and  let  me  lean 

On  heap'd  up  flowers,  in  regions  clear  and  far ; 
Bring  me  a  tablet  whiter  than  a  star, 
Or  hand  of  hymning  angel,  when  'tis  seen 
The  silver  strings  of  heavenly  harp  atween  : 
And  let  there  glide,  by  many  a  pearly  car, 
Pink  robes,  and  wavy  hair,  and  diamond  jar, 
And  half-discovered  wings,  and  glances  keen. 
The  while  let  music  wander  round  my  ears  ; 
And  as  it  reaches  each  delicious  ending, 
Let  me  write  down  a  line  of  glorious  tone, 
And  full  of  many  wonders  of  the  spheres  : 
For  what  a  height  my  spirit  is  contending  ! 
'Tis  not  content  so  soon  to  be  alone." — Sonnet. 

"  Flush  every  thing  that  hath  a  vermeil  hue  ; 
Let  the  rose  grow  intense  and  warm  the  air, 
And  let  the  clouds  of  even  and  of  morn 
Float  in  voluptuous  fleeces  o'er  the  hills  ; 


KEATS  325 

Let  the  red  wine  within  the  goblet  boil, 
Cold  as  a  bubbling  well ;  let  faint-lipped  shells, 
On  sands  or  in  great  deeps,  vermillion  turn 
Through  all  the  labyrinths." — Endymion. 


9.  Melody — Felicity  of  Expression. — "Keats  had 
an  instinct  for  fine  words,  which  are  in  themselves  pictures 
and  ideas,  and  had  more  of  the  power  of  poetic  expression 
than  any  [other]  modern  English  poet.  .  .  .  Thought 
emancipated  itself  from  expression  without  becoming  its  ty- 
rant ;  and  music  and  meaning  floated  together,  accordant  as 
swan  and  shadow,  on  the  smooth  element  of  his  verse." 
— Lowell. 

"  No  one  else  in  poetry,  save  Shakespeare,  has  in  expression 
quite  the  fascinating  felicity  of  Keats,  his  perfection  of  loveli- 
ness."— Matthew  Arnold. 

"  His  work  ['  Endymion  ']  lives  not  by  reason  of  its  per- 
fect structure,  but  by  reason  of  its  overflowing  beauty  of  po- 
etic thought  and  diction.  .  .  .  It  is  enough  that,  except 
Shakespeare,  no  English  poet  has  found  such  color  in  our 
speech,  has  made  it  linger  in  the  ear  in  phrase  so  rich  and 
full."— H.  W.  Mabie. 

"  The  faultless  force  and  the  profound  subtlety  of  his  deep 
and  cunning  instinct' for  absolute  natural  beauty  can  hardly 
be  questioned  or  overlooked ;  and  this  is  doubtless  the  one 
main  distinctive  gift  or  power  which  denotes  him  as  a  poet 
among  all  his  equals,  and  gives  right  to  rank  forever  beside 
Coleridge  and  Shelley." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"A  casual  survey  will  discover  felicitous  touches  of  de- 
scription, enough  to  indicate  to  any  candid  mind  how  full 
of  poetry  was  the  soul  of  Keats.  He  speaks  of  the  '  patient 
brilliance  of  the  moon  '  and  '  the  quaint  mossiness  of  aged 
roots.'  Whoso  feels  not  the  force  of  such  words  will  look  in 
vain  for  the  poetic  either  in  life  or  literature." — H.  T.  Tuck- 
erman. 


326  KEATS 

"  He  brooded  over  fine  phrases  like  a  lover,  and  often 
when  he  met  a  quaint  or  delicious  word  he  would  take  pains 
to  make  it  his  own  by  using  it  as  speedily  as  possible  in 
some  poem  he  was  writing." — David Masson. 

11  Perhaps  there  is  no  poet,  living  or  dead,  except  Shake- 
speare, who  can  pretend  to  anything  like  the  felicity  of  epithet 
which  characterizes  Keats.  One  word  or  phrase  is  the  es- 
sence of  a  whole  description  or  sentiment.  It  is  like  the  dull 
substance  of  the  earth  struck  through  by  electric  fires  and 
converted  into  veins  of  gold  and  diamonds." — William  Hew- 
itt. 

"  Keats  came  gradually  to  perceive  the  analogy  between 
painting  and  poetry  latent  in  the  picturesque  associations  of 
individual  words.' ' —  IV.  J.  Courthope. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Shed  no  tears !     Oh  shed  no  tears  ! 
The  flower  will  bloom  another  year. 
Weep  no  more  !     Oh  weep  no  more  ! 
Young  buds  sleep  in  the  root's  white  core. 
Dry  your  eyes  !     Oh  dry  your  eyes  ! 
For  I  was  taught  in  Paradise 
To  ease  my  breast  of  melodies. 

Shed  no  tears  !  "—Faery  Song. 


"  To  Sorrow 

I  bade  good  morrow, 
And  thought  to  leave  her  far  away  behind  ; 

But  cheerly,  cheerly, 

She  loves  me  dearly  ; 
She  is  so  constant  to  me,  and  so  kind  : 

I  would  deceive  her, 

And  so  leave  her, 
But  ah  !  she  is  so  constant  and  so  kind." 

— Endymion. 


KEATS 

"  'Tis  the  witching  hour  of  night, 
Orbed  is  the  moon  and  bright, 
And  the  stars  they  glisten,  glisten, 
Seeming  with  bright  eyes  to  listen — 

For  what  listen  they  ? 
For  a  song  and  for  a  charm, 
See  they  glisten  in  alarm, 
And  the  moon  is  waxing  warm 

To  hear  what  I  shall  say. 
Moon  !  keep  wide  thy  golden  ears- 
Hearken  stars  !  and  hearken,  spheres  ! 
Hearken,  thou  eternal  sky  ! 
I  sing  an  infant's  lullaby, 

A  pretty  lullaby. 
Listen,  listen,  listen,  listen, 
Glisten,  glisten,  glisten,  glisten, 

And  hear  my  lullaby  !  " — A  Prophecy. 


327 


SHELLEY,  1792-1822 

Biographical  Outline.— Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  born  at 
Field  Place,  Warnham,  near  Horsham,  August  4,  1792  ;  father 
a  man  of  means  and  gentle  birth,  afterward  a  baronet ;  Shel- 
ley is  first  instructed  by  a  clergyman  tutor,  and  at  the  age  of 
ten  is  placed  in  Sion  House  Academy,  near  Brentford  ;  being 
a  sensitive  child,  the  persecutions  endured  from  his  school- 
fellows inspire  him  with  that  hatred  of  oppression  and  that 
spirit  of  resistance  which  marked  all  his  after-life,  while  the 
smattering  of  scientific  knowledge  that  he  obtains  at  Brent- 
ford awakens  in  him  a  passionate  thirst  to  know  the  secrets  of 
nature  ;  at  twelve  he  enters  Eton,  where  he  repeats  the  ex- 
periences of  persecution  at  Brentford,  only  in  an  aggravated 
form,  and  where  he  again  seeks  relief  from  the  torture  of  his 
fellows  in  scientific  research ;  he  is  known  at  Eton  as  "  Shel- 
ley, the  Atheist,"  and  is  accused  of  "  cursing  his  father  and 
the  King;"  while  at  Eton  he  makes  good  progress  in  the 
classics,  and  imbibes  from  a  reading  of  the  first  two  books  of 
Pliny's  "  Natural  History  "  that  pantheism  which  marked  his 
religious  theories  ever  afterward  ;  in  his  sixteenth  year  he 
writes  and  publishes  his  romance  "  Zastrozzi,"  being  an  imi- 
tation of  the  style  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe ;  in  1810  he  publishes 
another  romance,  entitled  "  St.  Irvyne,  or  the  Rosicrucian," 
and  soon  afterward  collaborates  with  his  cousin,  Thomas 
Medwin,  in  writing  a  poem,  which  they  call  "  The  Wan- 
dering Jew ;  "  this  poem  was  eventually  published  in  Fraser' 's 
Magazine;  in  1810  Shelley  publishes  also  a  volume  entitled 
"  Poems  by  Victor  and  Cazire,"  a  part  of  which  was  written 
either  by  his  sister  Elizabeth  or  by  his  cousin,  Harriet 
Grove,  to  whom  he  thought  himself  attached ;  Shelley  soon 

328 


SHELLEY 

withdrew  this  volume,  on  learning  that  his  coadjutor  had 
cribbed  wholesale  from  Matthew  Gregory  Lewis. 

He  enters  University  College,  Oxford,  April  loth,  and  soon 
afterward  forms  a  friendship  with  Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg,  a 
youth  of  sarcastic  humor,  who  had  great  influence  over 
Shelley  all  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  who  encouraged  him  in  his 
natural  aggressiveness  against  established  authority  ;  in  1810 
Shelley  and  Hogg  circulate  a  pamphlet  of  burlesque  verses, 
purporting  to  have  been  written  by  Margaret  Nicholson,  an 
insane  woman  who  had  tried  to  kill  the  King ;  soon  afterward 
Shelley  submits  to  the  bishops  and  heads  of  colleges  a  syllabus 
of  the  arguments  supposed  to  demonstrate  "the  necessity  of 
atheism;"  on  March  25,  1811,  he  is  summoned  before  the 
college  authorities,  and,  on  his  refusal  to  answer  their  ques- 
tions, is  handed  a  sentence  of  expulsion,  which  had  been  pre- 
viously signed  and  sealed  ;  Hogg  protests  against  the  injustice 
to  his  friend,  and  is  himself  expelled  in  consequence. 

Being  excluded,  also,  from  his  own  home,  Shelley  takes 
lodgings  in  London  at  15  Poland  Street,  and  frequents  the 
hospitals  with  the  idea  of  eventually  becoming  a  physician  ; 
while  in  London  he  renews  a  slight  acquaintance  already 
formed  with  Harriet  Westbrook,  the  fifteen-year-old  daughter 
of  a  retired  hotel-keeper,  and  also  a  school-friend  of  Shelley's 
sister  ;  Miss  Westbrook  fancies  herself  persecuted  at  home,  and 
Shelley  sympathizes  and  tries  to  interfere  in  her  behalf;  before 
his  expulsion  from  Oxford  he  had  been  refused  by  his  cousin, 
Harriet  Grove,  and  when  he  is  recalled  to  London  from  his 
summer  vacation  of  1811  by  letters  from  Harriet  Westbrook, 
imploring  his  assistance,  influenced  by  compassion  and  pique, 
he  elopes  with  her  to  Edinburgh,  where  they  are  married 
August  28,  1811  ;  during  the  winter  of  1811-12  Shelley 
resides  at  Keswick,  where  Southey  receives  him  kindly,  and 
here  he  opens  his  correspondence  with  Godwin,  whose  work 
on  "Political  Justice"  had  influenced  the  poet  profoundly; 
inspired  by  Godwin's  principles,  Shelley  leaves  Keswick  in 


330  SHELLEY 

February,  1812,  on  a  quixotic  expedition  to  redress  the 
wrongs  of  Ireland ;  he  makes  several  public  addresses  in  Ire- 
land, publishes  "An  Address  to  the  Irish  People,"  and  in 
April  departs  for  Wales,  leaving  Irish  matters  much  as  he 
found  them  ;  about  this  time  he  becomes  a  vegetarian,  and 
he  generally  follows  this  kind  of  diet  so  long  as  he  is  in  Eng- 
land ;  he  spends  the  early  summer  of  1812  at  Cwm  Elan,  and 
later  settles  at  Lynmouth  in  North  Devon,  where  he  publishes 
a  powerful  remonstrance  against  the  condemnation  of  one 
Eaton  for  publishing  the  third  part  of  Thomas  Paine's  "  Age 
of  Reason." 

During  1812  Shelley  excites  the  attention  of  the  Govern- 
ment by  sending  to  sea  in  boxes  and  bottles  a  "  Declaration 
of  Rights  "  and  a  poem  entitled  "  The  Devil's  Walk  ;  "  until 
after  the  excitement  thus  caused  had  passed,  he  secludes  him- 
self at  Tanyrallt,  near  Tremadoc,  in  North  Wales ;  while 
there  he  becomes  so  interested  in  an  important  public  engi- 
neering work  (a  sea-wall)  that  he  goes  to  London  to  raise 
money  for  the  prosecution  of  the  work  ;  while  in  London  he 
meets  Godwin  ;  he  leaves  Tanyrallt  in  February,  1813,  and 
settles  in  Ireland,  near  Killarney,  till  the  following  June, 
when  he  goes  with  his  wife  to  London,  where  their  first  child, 
lanthe,  is  born  June  28,  1813  ;  in  July  Shelley  takes  a  house 
in  Bracknell,  in  Berkshire,  near  Windsor  Forest ;  about  this 
time  his  "  Queen  Mab,"  apparently  written  in  1812,  is  pub- 
lished with  an  appendix  of  irrelevant  matter  consisting  of 
notes  on  "  natural  diet ;"  the  poem  remained  unknown  till 
1821,  when  a  pirated  reproduction,  which  Shelley  tried  in 
vain  to  suppress,  won  the  fame  so  long  denied  to  the  origi- 
nal; early  in  1814  he  publishes  an  ironical  "  Refutation 
of  Deism;"  during  1814  begins  his  estrangement  from  his 
wife,  which  was  due  primarily  to  "a  radical  incompatibility 
of  temperament."  although  as  late  as  March  23,  1814,  he 
secures  her  legal  status  by  strengthening  the  original  Scotch 
marriage  ceremony  with  a  re-marriage  under  the  rites  of  the 


SHELLEY  331 

Church  of  England;  while  he  is  gradually  becoming  estranged 
and  is  being  attracted  by  Mary  Godwin,  Mrs.  Shelley  leaves 
her  home  for  her  father's  house  at  Bath. 

On  July  28,  1814,  Shelley  leaves  England  with  Mary  God- 
win, taking  with  them  Jane  .Clairmont,  daughter  of  Mary 
Godwin's  step-mother  and  afterward  notorious  as  one  of 
Byron's  mistresses ;  the  party  travel  through  France  to 
Switzerland,  where  Shelley  writes  to  Harriet,  proposing  that 
she  join  them  ;  he  is  soon  obliged  to  return  to  England,  how- 
ever, by  the  failure  to  receive  expected  remittances;  the  de- 
tails of  this  escapade  were  afterward  recorded  by  Shelley  in  a 
short  monologue  entitled  "The  History  of  a  Six  Weeks' 
Tour;"  later  in  1814  Shelley's  wife  gives  birth  to  a  son, 
and  his  financial  supplies  are  cut  off  by  the  mutual  hostilities 
of  the  Shelleys,  the  Westbrooks,  and  the  Godwins;  on  the 
death  of  Shelley's  grandfather,  early  in  1815,  the  poet's 
father  settles  on  him  an  annuity  of  ^1,000  a  year,  and  he, 
in  turn,  gives  to  Harriet  ^200  a  year ;  after  a  tour  of  south- 
ern England,  he  settles  for  a  time  in  a  house  at  Bishopsgate, 
near  Windsor  Forest,  where  he  recovers  from  a  threatened 
attack  of  tuberculosis,  and  where  the  solitude  inspires  his  first 
really  worthy  poem,  "  Alastor,  the  Spirit  of  Solitude,"  pub- 
lished in  1816  with  several  of  Shelley's  minor  poems  ;  dur- 
the  winter  of  1815-16  he  adds  much  to  his  mental  culture  by 
the  study  of  Greek  literature  with  his  friend  Hogg  and 
Thomas  Love  Peacock,  whom  Shelley  had  met  through  his 
publisher,  Hookham ;  in  January,  1816,  a  son  is  born  to 
Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin  ;  he  now  gives  up  his  feverish  de- 
sire for  political  agitation,  develops  more  tranquillity  of  soul, 
and  becomes  content  to  influence  society  through  his  writings; 
about  this  time  he  probably  wrote  his  beautiful  prose  "  Essay 
on  Christianity,"  not  published  till  1859 — after  his  death — a 
production  that  exhibits  a  great  change  in  the  poet's  views 
and  religious  attitude  since  the  wild  days  of  "  Queen  Mab." 

In  May,  1816,  he  makes  a  hasty  flight  into  Switzerland,  in 


332  SHELLEY 

company  with  his  wife  and  Jane,  or  Claire,  Clairmont,  doubt- 
less to  escape  the  importunities  of  Godwin  for  further  loans  in 
addition  to  large  sums  that  Shelley  had  already  given  him; 
in  Switzerland  they  meet  Byron,  who  now  calls  Shelley  "  the 
most  gentle,  the  most  amiable,  and  the  least  worldly-minded 
person  I  have  ever  met ;  "  while  they  are  in  Switzerland  with 
Byron  Shelley  visits  Mont  Blanc,  and  Mary  Godwin  partly 
composes  her  novel  "  Frankenstein  ;  "  returning  to  England  in 
the  autumn  of  1816,  Shelley  settles  temporarily  at  Bath ;  here 
they  are  deeply  affected  by  the  death  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft, 
Mary  Godwin's  half-sister,  and  by  the  suicidal  drowning  of 
Harriet  Shelley,  on  December  10,  1816,  in  the  Serpentine, 
Hyde  Park,  London ;  Shelley's  marriage  with  Mary  Godwin 
is  legally  sanctioned  December  30,  1816,  and  he  attempts 
to  gain  possession  of  his  two  children  by  Harriet  through  an 
appeal  to  the  Court  of  Chancery,  but  a  decision  given  by  Lord 
Eldon,  March  27,  1817,  denies  his  appeal ;  early  in  1817  he 
publishes,  anonymously,  his  "  Proposal  for  Putting  Reform  to 
the  Vote  Throughout  the  Kingdom"  and  later  in  the  same 
year  his  "  Address  to  the  People  on  the  Death  of  the  Princess 
Charlotte;  "  in  September,  1817,  a  daughter  is  born  to  Shel- 
ley and  Mary  Godwin,  and  his  family  is  further  increased  by 
the  coming  of  Claire  Clairmont  and  her  child  by  Byron; 
among  his  neighbors  at  Bath  is  Leigh  Hunt,  who  had  been 
most  kind  to  Shelley  during  the  miseries  of  the  previous  win- 
ter, and  whom  Shelley  repaid  later  with  a  gift  of  ;£  1,400, 
much  more  than  was  consistent  with  the  claims  of  nearer  kin- 
dred upon  Shelley;  through  Hunt  he  meets  Keats,  though 
their  acquaintance  never  became  intimate ;  a  renewal  of  im- 
portunities by  Godwin  for  further  financial  aid  now  completely 
estranges  him  from  Shelley ;  during  1817  the  poet  writes,  in  six 
months,  "  The  Revolt  of  Islam,"  which  is  published  in  Lon- 
don in  1818  ;  this  poem  was  written  partly  on  a  seat  in  Bisham 
wood  and  partly  in  a  boat  among  the  islets  of  the  Thames; 
it  is  bitterly  attacked  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  and  is  highly 


SHELLEY  333 

praised  by  Professor  Wilson  ("  Christopher  North"),  writing 
under  the  influence  of  De  Quincey,  but  is  otherwise  unnoticed  ; 
during  1817  Shelley  also  gives  much  time  to  relieving  the  dis- 
tress of  his  cottager  neighbors  at  Bath,  and  writes  more  polit- 
ical tracts,  using  the  pseudonym  "The  Hermit  of  Marlow." 

He  again  leaves  England  March  n,  1818,  reaches  Turin 
March  2ist,  and  remains  in  Italy  thereafter  till  his  death;  he 
spends  the  spring  of  1818  at  Genoa  and  Milan  and  the  sum- 
mer at  the  baths  of  Lucca,  where  he  translates  Plato's  "  Sym- 
posium "  and  completes  "  Rosalind  and  Helen;"  he  goes 
thence  to  Venice,  to  deliver  to  Byron  his  daughter  by  Claire 
Clairmont ;  at  Venice  Shelley's  own  daughter  Clara  dies, 
and  he  resides  for  a  time  at  Este  in  a  villa  lent  him  by  Byron; 
here  he  begins  "  Prometheus  Unbound,"  and  writes  "  Lines 
on  the  Euganean  Hills,"  which  was  published  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  with  a  few  other  poems  ;  he  also  writes  "Julian  and 
Maddalo  "  about  this  time;  in  November,  1818,  he  starts 
for  Rome,  and  while  on  the  journey  begins  his  series  of  in- 
comparable letters  to  Peacock — letters  that  place  him,  in  the 
opinion  of  Leslie  Stephen,  "at  the  head  of  English  letter- 
writers.  ' ' 

Shelley  spends  the  month  of  December,  1818,  at  Naples, 
where  he  writes  "  Lines  Written  in  Dejection;  "  returning 
to  Rome,  he  remains  till  June,  1819,  when  the  death  of  his 
son  William  causes  him  to  remove  to  Leghorn  and  thence  to 
Florence ;  here  his  third  son,  afterward  Sir  Percy  Bysshe 
Shelley,  was  born  ;  in  November,  1819,  after  finishing  "  Pro- 
metheus Unbound,"  Shelley  begins  "The  Cenci,"  based  on 
the  tragedy  of  Beatrice  Cenci,  whose  face  had  fascinated  him 
in  the  reputed  portrait  by  Guido  in  the  Colonna  palace  at 
Rome;  both  "  Prometheus  Unbound  "  and  "  The  Cenci  "  are 
published  in  1819-20  ;  while  at  Florence,  in  October,  1819, 
Shelley  writes  the  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind"  (his  noblest 
lyric),  his  parody,  "  Peter  Bell  the  Third,"  and  "The  Masque 
of  Anarchy ' '  (provoked  by  the  Manchester  massacre  of  Au- 


334  SHELLEY 

.gust,  1819;  «  Peter  Bell  the  Third  "  was  not  published  till 
1839;  late  in  1819  the  poet  removes  to  Pisa,  which  is  his 
home,  mainly,  during  the  rest  of  his  life  ;  at  Pisa,  in  July, 
1820,  he  writes  his  "  Epistle  to  Maria  Gisborne"  (growing 
out  of  a  premature  project  of  Shelley  and  his  friend  Gisborne 
for  a  steamboat  line  between  Genoa  and  Leghorn)  ;  during 
1820  he  writes  "  The  Witch  of  Atlas"  and  his  anonymous 
burlesque  tragedy,  "  Swellfoot  the  Tyrant,"  based  on  Queen 
Caroline's  trial  and  withdrawn  from  publication  because  the 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Vice  threatened  to  prosecute 
the  author  ;  during  the  same  year  he  writes  also  "  The  Sensi- 
tive Plant  "  and  "  The  Skylark,"  and  completes  "  Epipsychi- 
dion  ;  "  "  Epipsychidion  "  was  partly  based  on  the  story  of 
an  Italian  lady,  Emilia  Viviani,  who  had  been  imprisoned  in 
a  convent  to  compel  her  to  an  obnoxious  marriage,  and  whom 
Shelley  met  when  the  "Epipsychidion"  had  been  begun 
but  thrown  aside  ;  the  poem  was  published  in  London  in 
1821;  while  writing  "Epipsychidion"  Shelley  writes  also 
his  masterly  "Defence  of  Poetry,"  being  an  answer  to  an 
argument  by  Peacock  ;  two  additional  parts  of  the  "  Defence 
of  Poetry  "  were  planned  but  never  written,  and  the  first  part 
was  not  published  till  Shelley's  prose  writings  appeared,  in 
1840,  after  his  death. 

In  1821,  on  the  death  of  Keats,  Shelley  writes  and  publishes 
at  Pisa  his  "  Adonais ;  "  during  this  year  he  visits  Byron  at 
Ravenna  and  makes  arrangements  for  him  to  remove  to  Pisa ; 
in  the  autumn  of  1821  the  news  of  the  Greek  insurrection 
inspires  Shelley's  "  Hellas,"  which  is  published  in  London 
in  1822;  during  1822  he  begins  his  tragedy  on  Charles  I., 
and  makes  translations  from  "Faust"  and  from  Calderon's 
"  Magico  Prodigioso;  "  in  April,  1822,  the  Shelleys  remove 
to  Lerici,  near  Spezzia,  and  soon  afterward  he  writes  there  his 
"  Triumph  of  Life  ;  "  on  the  arrival  at  Pisa  of  Leigh  Hunt 
and  his  apparently  dying  wife,  in  May,  1822,  Shelley  hastens 
thither  and  aids  Byron  in  making  them  as  comfortable  as  pos- 


SHELLEY  335 

sible ;  he  sets  sail  from  Leghorn  for  Spezzia,  July  8,  1822,  in 
company  with  his  friend  and  neighbor,  Edward  E.  Williams, 
but  the  vessel  is  caught  in  a  squall  and  all  on  board  are 
drowned  ;  on  the  i8th  of  July  Shelley's  body,  recognized  by 
the  volumes  of  Sophocles  and  Keats  in  the  coat-pockets,  was 
washed  ashore  near  Viareggio  ;  it  was  at  first  buried  in  the 
sand,  but  on  the  i6th  of  August  following,  in  the  presence 
of  Byron,  Leigh  Hunt,  and  Trelawney,  it  was  cremated, 
and  the  ashes  were  interred  in  the  Protestant  cemetery  at 
Rome,  December  17,  1822  ;  his  heart,  which  would  not 
burn,  was  snatched  from  the  flames  by  Trelawney,  was  given 
to  Mrs.  Shelley,  and  is  still  in  the  possession  of  the  family ; 
in  1823  was  published  a  volume  entitled  "  Poetical  Pieces  " 
containing  ''Prometheus  Unbound,"  " Hellas,"  "The  Cen- 
ci,"  "Rosalind  and  Helen,"  and  other  poems;  in  1824 
"Julian  and  Maddalo  "  and  "  The  Witch  of  Atlas,"  hitherto 
unpublished,  appeared  in  a  volume  together  with  the  unpub- 
lished "Triumph  of  Life,"  the  "Epistle  to  Maria  Gisborne," 
and  many  minor  lyrics  and  translations,  the  whole  entitled 
"Posthumous  Poems;"  the  cost  of  this  publication  was 
borne  by  the  poets  B.  W.  Procter  and  T.  L.  Beddoes  and 
by  Beddoe's  future  biographer,  T.  Kelsall ;  this  volume  was 
almost  immediately  withdrawn  by  an  agreement  with  the 
poet's  father,  Sir  Timothy  Shelley,  and  for  several  years 
Shelley's  poems  appeared  only  in  pirated  editions,  as  the 
courts  had  refused  to  protect  "  Queen  Mab  "  with  copyright; 
in  1839  Mrs.  Shelley  published  an  authentic  edition  of  her 
husband's  poems  in  four  volumes,  including  some  lyrics  till 
then  in  manuscript. 

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Wiqdus,  184-237. 

Nineteenth  Century,  23  :  23-40  (M.  Arnold). 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  56:  174-181  (H.  D.  Traill). 
Taifs  Magazine,  12  :  760-761  (De  Quincey) ;   13  :  23-29  (De  Quincey). 
Fraser's  Magazine,  20:  38-53  (J.  C.  Shairp). 
Century,  22 :  622-629  (G.  E.  Woodberry). 
Contemporary  Review,  46 :  383-396  (E.  Dowden). 
Academy,  30 :  371-374  (T.  H.  Caine) ;  395-396  (E.  Dowden) ;  412  (T. 

H.  Caine);  22:426  (W.  Minto) ;    213-214  (T.  H.  Caine). 
Athenaum,  1882,  2  :  78  (W.  M.  Rossetti)  ;   144  (W.  M.   Rossetti)  ;   176 

(W.  M.  Rossetti) ;   1887,  i  :  641  (E.  Dowden). 
Nation,  44:  146-147  (G.  E.  Woodberry). 
Academy,  31  :  220-237  (E-  Dowden). 
Fortnightly  Review,  48:  461-481  (E.  Dowden). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Mysticism — Subtlety— Idealism.— "  His  descrip- 
tions are  often  strangely  unreal.  They  seem  to  be  enveloped 
in  a  hazy,  wavering  atmosphere,  as  if  they  were  not  actual 
scenes  but  the  combinations  of  a  remembered  dream.  One 
does  not  look  upon  them  as  he  looks  upon  living  nature  when 
he  stands  face  to  face  with  her  beauty;  but  they  are  seen 
through  a  gauzy  medium  of  memory,  like  places  which  may 
have  impressed  the  mind  in  the  earliest  period  of  its  conscious- 
Bess.  .  .  .  Words  were  often  used  by  him  not  in  their 
common  or  obvious  meaning  but  in  a  sense  derived  from  re- 
mote and  complicated  relations.  ...  A  great  fault  of 
Shelley's  poetry  is  the  obscurity  of  which  so  many  readers 
complain.  ...  A  frequent  cause  of  his  obscurity  is  the 
excessive  subtlety  and  refinement  of  his  imagination. "- 
Parke  Godwin. 

"  Shelley  was  a  poetical  mystic,  but  a  poetical  mystic  of  a 
very  unique  kind.  .  .  .  Shelley's  poetical  mysticism  is, 
in  the  quick  throb  of  its  pulses,  in  the  flush  and  glow  of  its 


SHELLEY  339 

hectic  beauty  and  the  thrill  of  its  exquisite  anguish  and 
equally  exquisite  delirium  of  imagined  bliss,  essentially  and  to 
the  last  the  mysticism  of  intellectual  youth.  .  .  .  Shel- 
ley's idealism  betrays  its  genuineness  in  the  sorrowful  wail,  the 
even  hoarsely  discordant  note,  which  frequently  sings  through 
it.  ...  He  is  an  idealist  to  the  heart's  core.  .  .  . 
There  was  no  inherent  strength  in  his  conception  of  beauty. 
He  abstracted  it  from  the  world  instead  of  impressing  it  or 
imposing  it  on  the  world.  .  .  .  His  mysticism  arises 
quite  as  much  from  his  refusal  to  acknowledge  the  world  be- 
yond as  from  his  reluctance  to  meddle  with  the  coarse  details 
on  this  side  of  his  chosen  sphere.  .  .  .  The  result  of  his 
idealism,  as  of  all  such  idealism,  was  that  he  nowhere  found 
any  true  rest  for  his  spirit,  since  he  never  came  upon  any  free 
and  immutable  will  on  which  to  lean.  .  .  .  The  practical 
centre  or  focus  of  his  meaning  lies  concealed  in  his  own  heart, 
while  all  that  he  pictures  for  us  is  the  secondary  effect  exerted 
upon  himself  without  the  causes  which  produced  it.  ... 
There  are  no  po«ms  which  seem  more  hazy  to  our  age  than  his 
political  and  religious  dreams." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Watching  the  yellow  bees  in  the  ivy  bloom  and  the  re- 
flected pine  forest  in  the  water  pools,  watching  the  sunset  as 
it  faded  and  the  dawn  as  it  fired,  and  weaving  all  fair  and  fleet- 
ing things  into  a  tissue  where  light  and  music  were  at  one — 
that  was  the  task  of  Shelley." — Andrew  Lang. 

"  His  poetry  is  like  the  subtle  veil  woven  by  the  witch  of 
Atlas  from  threads  of  fleecy  mists,  long  lines  of  light  such  as 
are  kindled  by  the  dawn  and  star-beams.  When  he  speaks  of 
natural  scenery  the  solid  earth  seems  to  be  dissolved  and  we 
are  in  presence  of  nothing  but  the  shifting  phantasmagoria  of 
cloudland,  the  glow  of  moonlight  on  eternal  snow  or  the 
golden  lightning  of  the  setting  sun." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  His  poetry  is,  in  fact,  a  kind  of  air-hung  mythology, 
shadowing  forth  the  essential  principles  of  a  creed  which  might 
be  called  Shelleyism." — David  Masson. 


340  SHELLEY 

"  His  sphere  is  the  unconditioned  ;  he  floats  away  into  an 
imaginary  Elysium  or  an  unexpected  Utopia ;  beautiful  and 
excellent  of  course,  but  having  nothing  in  common  with  the 
absolute  laws  of  the  present  world.  .  .  .  Living  a  good 
deal  in,  and  writing  a  good  deal  about,  the  abstract  world,  it 
was  inevitable  that  he  should  often  deal  in  fine  subtleties,  af- 
fecting very  little  the  concrete  hearts  of  real  men. 
Many  pages  of  his  are  in  consequence  nearly  unintelligible, 
even'to  good  critics  of  common  poetry.  .  .  .  His  intel- 
lect did  not  tend  to  the  strong  grasp  of  realities  :  its  taste  was 
rather  for  the  subtle  refining  of  theories,  the  distilling  of  ex- 
quisite abstractions." — Walter  Bagehot. 

"  In  '  Epipsychidion  '  the  very  mood  of  mind  tends  towards 
the  intangible ;  while  the  frame-work  of  imagery  or  symbol 
remains  to  this  day  an  enigma  to  the  students  of  the  poetry 
and  life  of  Shelley.  .  .  .  But  Shelley,  like  Zeus,  was  a 
cloud-compeller ;  and  of  his  clouds  even  the  most  vaporous 
refuses  to  disperse." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  His  aim  is  rather  to  render  the  effect  of  the  thing  than  the 
thing  itself;  the  soul  and  spirit  of  life  rather  than  the  living  form, 
the  growth  rather  than  the  thing  grown." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  Shelley's  ideal  nature  modified  his  religious  sentiment. 
.  .  .  He  was  too  fond  of  looking  beyond  the  obvious  and 
the  tangible  to  form  a  merely  descriptive  poet  and  too  meta- 
physical in  his  taste  to  be  a  purely  sentimental  one.  In  gen- 
eral, the  scope  of  his  poems  is  abstract,  abounding  in  won- 
derful displays  of  fancy  and  allegorical  invention." — H.  T. 
Tuckerman. 

"  We  move  in  Shelley's  world  between  heaven  and  earth, 
in  abstraction,  in  dreamland,  symbolism  :  the  beings  float  in 
it  like  those  fantastic  figures  which  we  see  in  the  clouds,  and 
which  alternately  undulate  and  change  form  capriciously,  in 
their  robes  of  snow  and  gold." — Taine. 

"  His  whole  conception  of  life  is  bounded  only  by  illu- 
sions. ' '  — Edmund  Gosse. 


SHELLEY  341 

"  For  my  part,  I  feel  that  some  of  the  visions  which  Shel- 
ley's poetry  conjures  up  as  I  read  it  are  but  the  phantoms, 
showing  thin  and  ghost-like,  indeed,  when  I  turn  from  them 
to  the  men  and  women  of  Shakespeare's  plays  or  Scott's  novels. 
He  is  in  endless  pursuit  of  unattainable  ideals,  ever  at  the  heels 
of  the  flying  perfect." — Edward  Dowden. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  was  a  Being  whom  my  spirit  oft 
Met  on  its  visioned  wanderings,  far  aloft, 
In  the  clear  golden  prime  of  my  youth's  dawn, 
Upon  the  fairy  isles  of  sunny  lawn, 
Amid  the  enchanted  mountains  and  the  caves 
Of  divine  sleep,  and  on  the  air-like  waves 
Of  wonder-level  dream,  whose  tremulous  floor 
Paved  her  light  steps.     On  an  imagined  shore, 
Under  the  grey  beak  of  some  promontory, 
She  met  me,  robed  in  such  exceeding  glory 
That  I  beheld  her  no\.."—Epipsychidwn. 

tl  A  portal  as  of  shadowy  adamant 

Stands  yawning  on  the  highway  of  the  life 

Which  we  all  tread,  a  cavern  huge  and  gaunt. 
Around  it  rages  an  unceasing  strife 

Of  shadows,  like  the  restless  clouds  that  haunt 
The  gap  of  some  cleft  mountain,  lifted  high 
Into  the  whirlwinds  of  the  upper  sky. 

And  many  pass  it  by  with  careless  tread, 

Not  knowing  that  a  shadowy     .     . 
Tracks  every  traveller  even  to  where  the  dead 

Wait  peacefully  for  their  companion  new. 
But  others,  by  more  curious  humor  led, 

Pause  to  examine  :  these  are  very  few, 
And  they  learn  little  there,  except  to  know 
That  shadows  follow  them  where'er  they  go." 

— An  Allegory. 


342  SHELLEY 

"  There  late  was  one  within  whose  subtle  being, 
As  light  and  wind  within  some  delicate  cloud 
That  fades  amid  the  blue  noon's  burning  sky, 
Genius  and  death  contended.     None  may  know 
The  sweetness  of  the  joy  which  made  his  breath 
Fail  like  the  trances  of  the  summer  air, 
When,  with  the  lady  of  his  love,  who  then 
First  knew  the  unreserve  of  mingled  being, 
He  walked  along  the  pathway  of  a  field, 
Which  to  the  east  a  hoar  wood  shadowed  o'er, 
But  to  the  west  was  open  to  the  sky." — The  Sunset. 


\.  Lyrical  Rapture. — "  The  unique  rapture  of  Shelley's 
cry  of  dread,  of  desire,  of  despair,  is  his  distinguish- 
ing feature  as  a  poet.  .  .  .  Other  lyrical  poets  write  of 
what  they  feel,  Shelley  of  what  he  wants  to  feel. 
It  is  in  such  bursts  of  song  as  the  '  Song  of  the  Sixth  Spirit,'' 
or  the  song  '  Life  of  Life  thy  Lips  Enkindle '  that  we  find 
lyrics  which  seem  fuller  of  spiritual  fire  than  any  other  Eng- 
lish poet  has  poured  into  our  language.  On  the  whole,  he 
seems  to  have  failed  in  working  out  any  complex  conception, 
while  his  passion  is  at  once  more  aerial  and  more  sweet  than 
that  of  any  other  English  poet." — ft.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Single  thrills  of  rapture,  which  are  insufficient  to  make 
long  poems  out  of,  supply  the  very  inspiration  for  the  true 
lyric.  It  is  the  predominance  of  emotion,  so  unhappy  to 
himself,  which  made  Shelley  the  lyrist  that  he  was.  When 
he  sings  his  lyric  strains,  whatever  is  least  pleasing  in  him  is 
softened  down,  if  it  does  not  wholly  disappear.  Whatever  is 
most  unique*  and  excellent  in  him  comes  out  at  its  best — his 
eye  for  abstract  beauty,  the  subtlety  of  his  thought,  the  rush 
of  his  eager  pursuing  desire,  the  splendor  of  his  imagery,  the 
delicate  rhythm,  the  matchless  music." — J.  C.  Shairp. 

11  Shelley  outsang  all  poets  on  record  but  some  two  or 
three  throughout  all  time  :  his  depths  and  heights  of  inner  and 
outer  music  are  as  divine  as  Nature's  and  not  sooner  exhausti- 


SHELLEY  343 

ble.     He  was  the  perfect  singing-god  ;  his  thoughts,  words, 
deeds,  all  sang  together." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

''The  very  isolation  and  suddenness  of  impulse  which  ren- 
dered him  unfit  for  the  composition  of  great  works  rendered 
him  peculiarly  fit  to  pour  forth  on  a  sudden  the  intense 
essence  of  a  peculiar  feeling  in  profuse  strains  of  unpremedi- 
tated art. ' '— r  Walter  Bagehot. 

"The  soul  of  aspiring  youth,  un trammeled  by  canons  of 
taste  and  untamed  by  schoolboy  discipline,  swells  into  rapt- 
ure at  his  lyric  sweetness,  finds  ambrosial  refreshment  from 
his  plenteous  fancies,  catches  fire  at  his  daring  thought."  — 
Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli. 

"  Morbid  his  visions  may  have  been  ;  but  in  no  modern 
poet,  Byron  excepted,  is  the  purely  lyric  spirit  so  clear-tuned 
and  melodious  as  in  the  author  of  '  Ala&Lor. '  " — Austin 
Dobson. 

"  Indeed,  the  lyrical  parfe  nf  thg  rtran-m  [<  Prometheus  Un- 
bound '  ]  §J£J^njLJLujpJ^  ..hazmojx>L.hy 
Sophpcles.  They  rise  upon  the  ear,  strains  of  sweet  melody. 
ravishing  it  with  delight,  and  leaving^  af^jthej^Jhj.ve_rjassed 
away,  the  sense  of  a  keen  but  dreamy  ecstasy. " — Parke  Godwin. 
"  ^  Witn  elevation  of  meaning,  and  splendor  and  beauty  of 
perception,  he  combined  the  most  searching,  the  most  inimi- 
table loveliness  of  verse-music." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  In  none  of  Shelley's  contemporaries  was  the  lyrical  fac- 
ulty so  paramount ;  and  whether  we  consider  his  minor  songs, 
his  odes,  or  his  more  complicated  choral  dramas,  we  acknowl- 
edge that  he  was  the  loftiest  and  the  most  spontaneous  singer 
of  our  language.  .  .  .  The  poem  <  Hellas  '  is  distinguished 
by  passages  of  great  lyrical  beauty,  rising  at  times  to  the  sub- 
limest  raptures  and  closing  to  the  half-pathetic  cadence  of 
that  well-known  Chorus  '  The  world's  great  age  begins 
anew.'  .  .  .  The  lyric  movement  of  the  Chorus  from 
'  Hellas '  .  .  .  marks  the  highest  point  of  Shelley's  rhyth- 
mical invention."— John  Addington  Symonds. 


344  SHELLEY 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Teach  us,  sprite  or  bird, 

What  sweet  thoughts  are  thine  : 

I  have  never  heard 

Praise  of  love  or  wine 

That  panted  forth  a  flood  of  rapture  so  divine. 

Waking  or  asleep, 

Thou  of  death  must  deem 

Things  more  true  and  deep 

Than  we  mortals  dream. 

Or  how  could  thy  notes  flow  in  such  a  crystal  stream  ? 

We  look  before  and  after, 
And  pine  for  what  is  not : 
Our  sincerest  laughter 
With  some  pain  is  fraught ; 

Our  sweetest  songs  are  those  that  tell  of  saddest  thought." 

—  To  a  Skylark. 
"  Spirit  of  Nature  !  thou 
Life  of  interminable  multitudes  ; 
Soul  of  those  mighty  spheres 

Whose  changeless  paths  through  heaven's  deep  silence  lie ; 
Soul  of  that  smallest  being 
The  dwelling  of  whose  life 
Is  one  faint  April  sun-gleam  ; 
Man,  like  these  passive  things, 
Thy  will  unconsciously  fulfilleth  : 
Like  theirs,  his  age  of  endless  peace, 
Which  time  is  fast  maturing, 
Will  swiftly,  surely,  come  ; 
And  the  unbounded  frame  which  thou  pervadest 
Will  be  without  a  flaw 
Marring  its  perfect  symmetry." — Queen  Mab. 

4<  Worlds  on  worlds  are  rolling  ever 
From  creation  to  decay, 
Like  the  bubbles  on  a  river, 
Sparkling,  bursting,  borne  away. 


SHELLEY  345 

But  they  are  still  immortal 

Who,  through  birth's  orient  portal 

And  death's  dark  chasm  hurrying  to  and  fro, 

Clothe  their  unceasing  flight 

In  the  brief  dust  and  light 

Gathered  around  their  chariots  as  they  go  : 

New  shapes  they  still  may  weave, 

New  gods,  new  laws  receive  : 

Bright  or  dim  are  they,  as  the  robes  they  last 

On  Death's  bare  ribs  had  cast."—Me//as. 


3.  Intellectual    Desire  —  Thirst  —  Yearning  .— 

Shelley  was  essentially  the  poet  of  intellectual  desire,  not  of 
all  emotion.  The  thrill  of  some  fugitive  feeling,  which  he  is 
either  vainly  pursuing  or  which  has  just  slipped  through  his 
faint  intellectual  grasp,  gives  the  key-note  to  every  one  of  his 
finest  poems.  .  .  .  His  '  Skylark  '  is  a  symbol  of  illimitable 
thirst  drinking  illimitable  sweetness,  an  image  of  that  rapture 
which  no  man  can  ever  reach,  because  it  soars  so  far  from 
earth,  because  it  is  ever  rising  with  unflagging  wing,  despising 
old  delights.  .  .  .  The  eager-souled  poet  of  unsatisfied 
desire — always  thirsting,  always  yearning;  never  pouring 
forth  the  strains  of  a  thankful  satisfaction  but  either  the  crav- 
ings of  an  expectant  rapture  or  the  agony  of  a  severed  nerve. 
.  .  .  If  we  look  at  any  of  the  lyrics  on  which  he  has  set 
the  full  stamp  of  his  genius,  we  find  that  it  images  one  of 
these  two  attitudes  of  intellect — the  keen  exquisite  sense  of 
want  gazing  wildly  forward  or  wildly  backward  but  vainly 
striving  to  close  on  something  which  eludes  its  grasp — that  is 
the  burden  of  every  song.  Whether  forward  or  backward 
gazing,  the  attitude  of  unsatisfied  desire  is  always  the  same, 
distinguishing  Shelley  from  the  many  great  contemporaries. 
He  cannot  be  satisfied  without  a  thrill  of  his  whole  soul.  In 
that  constant  yearning  which  he  felt  for  a  tingling  thrill  of 
new  intellectual  life,  there  was  at  times,  as  there  is  in  all  pro- 
found love  of  excitement,  a  jarring  which  is  ever  reflected  in 


346  SHELLEY 

his  general  demeanor.  .  .  .  His  poetry  is  the  poetry  of 
desire.  He  is  ever  the  homo  desideriorurn  ;  always  thirsting, 
always  yearning." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

11  Another  passion,  which  no  man  has  ever  felt  more  strongly 
than  Shelley— thfi_jjesir£-tp  penetrate  the  mysteries  of  f  yisfr- 
enre — is  deplete^  jfl  *  AlPsfnr  '  He  na(^»  *n  perhaps  an  un- 
equalled and  unfortunate  measure,  the  famine  of  intellect — 
the  daily  insatiable  craving  after  the  highest  truth,  which  is 
the  passion  of  '  Alastor.'  " — Walter  Bagehot. 

"  The  soul  of  aspiring  youth  catches  fire  at  his  daring 
thought,  and  melts  into  boundless  weeping  at  his  tender  sad- 
ness— the  sadness  of  a  soul  betrothed  to  an  ideal  unattainable 
in  this  present  sphere." — Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli.  . 

"  We  are  touched  through  his  poetry  with  a  certain  divine 
discontent,  so  that  not  music  nor  sculpture  nor  picture  nor 
song  can  wholly  satisfy  our  spirits ;  but  in  and  through  these 
we  reach  after  some  higher  beauty,  some  divine  goodness, 
which  we  may  not  attain  yet  toward  which  we  must  perpetu- 
ally aspire. ' ' — Edward  Dowden. 

"The  object  which  he  longed  for  was  some  abstract  intel- 
lectualized  spirit  of  beauty  and  loveliness,  which  should  thrill 
his  spirit  unceasingly  with  delicious  shocks  of  emotion.  This 
yearning,  panting  desire  is  expressed  by  him  in  a  thousand 
forms  and  figures  throughout  his  poetry.  It  was  not  mere 
sensuous  enjoyment  that  he  sought  but  keen  intellectual  and 
emotional  delight — the  mental  thrill,  the  glow  of  soul,  the 
tingling  of  the  nerves,  that  accompany  transcendental  rapt- 
ure."—/. C.  Shairp. 

"This  persistent  upward  striving,  this  earnestness,  this  pas- 
sionate intensity,  this  piety  of  soul  and  purity  of  inspiration, 
give  a  quite  unique  spirituality  to  his  poems." — John  Adding- 
ton  Symonds. 


SHELLEY  347 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Rarely,  rarely,  comest  thou, 
Spirit  of  Delight ! 
Wherefore  hast  thou  left  me  now 
Many  a  day  and  night  ? 
Many  a  weary  night  and  day 
'Tis  since  thou  art  fled  away." — To  a  Skylark. 

"  Where  art  thou,  beloved  To-morrow  ? 

When,  young  and  old,  strong  and  weak, 
Rich  and  poor,  through  joy  and  sorrow, 

Thy  sweet  smiles  we  ever  seek, 
In  thy  place — ah  well-a-day  ! — 

We  find  the  thing  we  fled — To-day." 

—  To-Morrow. 

I  pant  for  the  music  which  is  divine  ; 

My  heart  in  its  thirst  is  a  dying  power. 
Pour  forth  the  sound  like  enchanted  wine  ; 

Loosen  the  notes  in  a  silver  shower. 
Like  a  herbless  plain  for  the  gentle  rain, 
I  gasp,  I  faint,  till  they  wake  again. 

Let  me  drink  of  the  spirit  of  that  sweet  sound 

More,  oh  more  ! — I  am  thirsting  yet ! 
It  loosens  the  serpent  which  care  has  bound 

Upon  my  heart,  to  stifle  it ; 
"he  dissolving  strain,  through  every  vein, 
Passes  into  my  heart  and  brain." — Music. 

4.  Awelessness — Curiosity — Irreverence. — "  Shel- 
ley's awelessness  of  nature — 'curiosity,'  as  Hazlitt  calls  it — 
is  only  the  result  of  the  limitless  longing  with  which  he  seeks 
to  tear  the  veil  from  almost  any  secret,  human  or  divine ;  and 
yet  not  in  the  spirit  of  a  thirst  for  new  truth  so  much  as  a 
thirst  for  a  new  effervescence  of  nature  half-way  between 
knowledge  and  feeling.  This  characteristic  in  Shelley  is  an 


348  SHELLEY 

exceedingly  different  thing  from  that  species  of  scoffing  wit  in 
which  Byron  attained  such  pre-eminence,  and  which  consists 
in  insolent  daring  displayed  wantonly  before  the  face  of  a  mys- 
terious or  sacred  Power,  without  ever  caring  to  penetrate  the 
I  secret  of  the  mystery.  Shelley's  intellect  was  far  subtler  than 
Byron's,  and  betrayed  no  fascination  for  mere  acts  of  intel- 
lectual impertinence.  Byron  was  a  grown-up  school-boy,  with 
a  keen  pleasure  in  playing  practical  jokes  on  mighty  Powers 
in  which  he  half  believed.  Shelley  crept  up  to  them  with  an 
irresistible  longing  to  peep  under  the  veil  and  feel  a  new  thrill 
vibrate  through  his  nature.  ...  I  must  admit  that  Shel- 
ley's mind  resembles  that  of  the  Greeks  in  not  being  clothed 
with  that  '  instructive  mutual  awe '  which  Plato  makes,  in  his 
Protagoras,  the  natural  protection  of  all  human  society. 
.  .  .  That  eager  mind  rushing  breathlessly  along  the 
track  of  imaginative  desire,  would  have  needed  much  to  con- 
vince it  that  any  precincts  were  inviolable." — J{.  H.  Hutton. 

"Before  nothing  would  his  soul  bow  down.  Every  veil, 
however  sacred,  he  would  rend,  pierce  the  inner  shrine  of 
being,  and  force  it  to  give  up  its  secret.  There  is  in  him  a 
profane  audacity,  an  utter  awelessness.  Reverence  to  him 
was  another  word  for  hated  superstition.  .  .  .  Nothing 
was  to  him  inviolate ;  all  the  natural  reserves  he  would  break 
down."—/.  C.  Shairp. 

"  Curiosity  is  the  only  proper  category  of  his  mind  ;  and 
though  a  man  in  knowledge,  he  is  a  child  in  feeling." — 
Walter  Bagehot. 

"Shelley's  nature  was  peculiarlyj^vereiitial,  but  he  enter- 
tained certain  speculative  doubts.  Veneration  was  his  pre- 
dominant sentiment.  Speculatively  he  may  have  been  an 
atheist;  in  his  inmost  soul  he  was  a  Christian." — H.  T. 

ickerman. 

"  If  that  reverence  which  was  far  from  wanting  in  his  nat- 
ure had  been  only  presented  in  the  person  of  some  guide  to 
his  spiritual  being,  with  an  object  worthy  of  its  homage  and 


SHELLEY 


349 


trust,  it  is  probable  that  the  yet  free  and  noble  result  of  Shel- 
ley's individuality  would  have  been  presented  to  the  world  in 
a  form  which,  while  it  attracted  only  a  few,  would  not  have 
repelled  the  many." — George  Mac  Donald. 

"Shelley  contributed  a  new  quality  to  English  Literature 
— a  quality  of  ideality,  freedom,  and  spiritual  audacity, 
which  severe  critics  of  other  nations  think  we  lack." — J.  A. 
Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  this  is  Hell :  and  in  this  smother 
All  are  damnable  and  damned; 
Each  one,  damning,  damns  the  other; 
They  are  damned  by  one  another, — 
By  none  other  are  they  damned. 

'Tis  a  lie  to  say  '  God  damns.' 

Where  was  Heaven's  Attorney  General 

When  they  first  gave  out  such  flams  ? 

Let  there  be  an  end  of  shams: 

They  are  mines  of  poisonous  mineral." 

—Peter  Bell  the  Third. 

"  The  name  of  God 

Has  fenced  about  all  crime  with  holiness ; 
Himself  the  creature  of  his  worshippers; 
Whose  names  and  attributes  and  passions  change — 
Seeva,  Buddh,  Foh,  Jehovah,  God,  or  Lord — 
Even  with  the  human  dupes  who  build  his  shrines, 
Still  serving  o'er  the  war-polluted  world 
For  desolation's  watchword:  whether  hosts 
Stain  his  death-blushing  chariot-wheels,  as  on 
Triumphantly  they  roll  whilst  Brahmins  raise 
A  sacred  hymn  to  mingle  with  the  groans." 

— Queen  Mab. 
11  Once,  early  in  the  morning, 

Beelzebub  arose: 

With  care  his  sweet  person  adorning, 
He  put  on  his  Sunday  clothes. 


350  SHELLEY 

"  And  then  to  St.  James's  Court  he  went, 

And  St.  Paul's  Church  he  took  on  his  way ; 
He  was  mighty  thick  with  every  saint, 
Though  they  were  formal  and  he  was  gay. 

A  priest  at  whose  elbow  the  Devil  during  prayer 

Sate,  familiarly,  side  by  side, 
Declared  that,  if  the  tempter  were  there, 

His  presence  he  would  not  abide. 

'  Ah  ah  ! '  thought  old  Nick,  '  that's  a  very  stale  trick  ; 
For  without  the  Devil,  O  favorite  of  evil, 

In  your  carriage  you  would  not  ride.'  " 

—  The  Devils  Walk. 

5.  Acute  Sensibility — Sympathy.—"  Shelley  was  en- 
dowed by  nature  with  a  sensibility  acutely  alive  to  the  most 
fleeting  shades  of  joy  and  pain  —  warm,  full,  and  unselfish  in 
its  love,  deep-toned  and  mighty  in  its  indignation.  This 
fiery  spiritual  essence  was  enclosed  in  a  frame  sensitive  enough 
to  be  its  fit  embodiment.  No  reader  of  Shelley  can  be  igno- 
rant that  some  of  the  most  beautiful  exhibitions  of  the  tender- 
est  and  simplest  affections  of  the  heart  are  to  be  found  in  his 
writings ;  that  he  had  an  ear  exquisitely  tuned  to  catch  the 
still  sad  music  of  humanity,  that  human  hopes  and  fears  and 
loves  all  woke  sympathetic  echoes  in  his  heart;  that  the  lan- 
guage of  human  passions  kindles  and  burns  along  his  cre- 
ations, often  with  a  might  and  freedom  almost  Shakesperian." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  His  appropriate  sphere  is  what  I  may  call  swift  sensi- 
bility, the  intersecting  line  between  the  sensuous  and  the  in- 
tellectual or  moral.  Mere  sensation  is  too  literal  for  him, 
mere  feeling  too  blind  and  dumb,  thought  too  cold  ;  but  in 
the  line  where  sensation  and  feeling  are  just  passing  into 
thought  .  .  .  his  great  power  lay." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  I  thought  of  Shelley — so  we  all  think  of  him — as  a  man 
of  extraordinary  sensitiveness  and  susceptibility,  susceptibil- 
ity, above  all,  to  ideal  impressions.  .  .  .  Shelley's  pri- 


SHELLEY  351 

vate  happiness  did  not  dull  his  sensibility  to  the  wrongs  of 
the  world.  .  .  .  Shelley's  sympathetic  delight  in  the  in- 
nocent joy  of  children  and  all  happy  creatures  did  not  hinder 
or  check  a  passion  of  charity  for  those  who  were  sufferers, 
brethren  of  his  own  in  sorrow,  sickness,  and  need." — Ed- 
ward Dowden. 

"  Shelley's   sensibility  was   vivid   but   peculiar.     . 
The  nerves  of  Shelley  quivered  at  the  idea  of  loveliness ;  but 
no  coarse  sensation  obtruded  particular  objects  upon  him." 
—  Walter  Bagehot. 

"  Shelley  seems  to  us  an  incarnation  of  what  was  sought  in 
the  sympathies  and  desires  of  instructive  life,  a  light  of  dawn 
and  a  foreshadowing  of  the  weather  of  his  day." — Margaret 
Fuller  Ossoli. 

"  It  is  easy  to  perceive  throughout  ['Queen  Mab']  that  the 
writer's  ungovernable  sensibilities  ran  away  with  his  other 
faculties. ' '  —Parke  Godwin. 

"  He  had  the  lawlessness  of  the  man  with  the  sensibility  of 
the  woman." — Charles  Kings  ley. 

"  Nonconformity  of  tastes  might  easily  arise  between  two 
parties  without  much  blame  to  either  when  one  of  the  two 
had  received  from  nature  an  intellect  and  a  temperament  so 
dangerously  eccentric,  and  constitutionally  carried,  by  del- 
icacy so  exquisite  of  organization,  to  eternal  restlessness  and 
irritability  of  nerves,  if  not  absolutely  at  times  to  lunacy." 
— De  Quincey. 

11  His  poem  [«  The  Sensitive  Plant '],  the  story  of  a  plant,  is 
also  the  story  of  a  soul — Shelley's  soul,  the  sensitive." — Tame. 

11  In  this  have  I  long  believed  that  my  power  consists;  in 
sympathy  and  that  part  of  the  imagination  which  relates  to 
sentiment  and  contemplation  I  am  formed,  if  for  anything 
now  in  common  with  the  herd  of  mankind,  to  apprehend  re- 
mote and  minute  distinctions  of  feelings,  whether  relative  to 
the  external  nature  or  to  the  living  beings  which  surround 
us." — Shelley. 


352  SHELLEY 

"  To  Mr.  Shelley  all  that  exists  exists  indeed — color, 
sound,  motion,  thought,  sentiment,  the  lofty  and  the  hum- 
ble, great  and  small,  detail  and  generality — from  the  beauties 
of  the  blade  of  grass  or  the  evanescent  tint  of  a  cloud  to  the 
heart  of  a  man,  which  he  would  elevate  and  the  mysterious 
spirit  of  the  universe,  which  he  would  seat  above  worship 
itself."—  Leigh  Hunt. 

"  The  very  first  letter  [of  Shelley],  as  one  instance  for  all, 
strikes  the  keynote  of  the  predominating  sentiment  of  Shel- 
ley throughout  his  life — his  sympathy  with  the  oppressed." 
— Browning. 

"  Shelley  had  in  him  that  element  of  wide  sympathy  and 
lofty  hope  for  his  kind  which  is  essential  both  to  the  birth 
and  the  subsequent  making  of  the  greatest  poets." — George 
MacDonald. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Music,  when  soft  voices  die, 
Vibrates  in  the  memory  ; 
Odors,  when  sweet  violets  sicken, 
Live  within  the  sense  they  quicken. 

Rose-leaves,  when  the  rose  is  dead, 
Are  heaped  for  the  beloved's  bed  ; 
And  so  thy  thoughts,  when  thou  art  gone, 
Love  itself  shall  slumber  on." — To . 

"  Are  there  not  hopes  within  thee  which  this  scene 
Of  linked  and  gradual  being  has  confirmed — 
Whose  stingings  bade  thy  heart  look  further  still, 
When,  to  the  moonlight  walk  by  Henry  led, 
Sweetly  and  sadly  thou  didst  talk  of  death  ? 
And  wilt  thou  rudely  tear  them  from  thy  breast, 
Listening  supinely  to  a  bigot's  creed, 
Or  tamely  crouching  to  the  tyrant's  rod 
Whose  iron  thongs  are  red  with  human  gore  ? 
Never  ;  but,  bravely  bearing  on,  thy  will 


SHELLEY 


353 


Is  destined  an  eternal  war  to  wage 
With  tyranny  and  falsehood,  and  uproot 
The  germs  of  misery  from  the  human  heart. 
Thine  is  the  hand  whose  piety  would  soothe 
The  thorny  pillow  of  unhappy  crime, 
(Whose  impotence  an  easy  pardon  gains) 
Watching  its  wanderings  as  a  friend's  disease." 

— Queen  Mab. 
"Men  of  England,  wherefore  plough 

For  the  lords  who  lay  ye  low  ? 

Wherefore  weave  with  toil  and  care 

The  rich  robes  your  tyrants  wear  ? 

Wherefore  feed  and  clothe  and  save, 
From  the  cradle  to  the  grave, 
Those  ungrateful  drones  who  would 
Drain  your  sweat — nay,  drink  your  blood  ? 

Wherefore,  Bees  of  England,  forge 
Many  a  weapon,  chain,  and  scourge, 
That  these  stingless  drones  may  spoil 
The  forced  produce  of  your  toil  ? 

Have  ye  leisure,  comfort,  calm, 
Shelter,  food,  love's  gentle  balm  ? 
Or  what  is  it  ye  buy  so  dear 
With  your  pain  and  with  your  fear  ? 

The  seed  ye  sow  another  reaps  ; 
The  wealth  ye  find  another  keeps  ; 
The  robes  ye  weave  another  wears  ; 
The  arms  ye  forge  another  bears." 

—  To  the  Men  of  England. 

6.  Rare  Imaginative  Power. — "  So  keen  was  his  in- 
tellectual vision  that  he  saw  shapes  where  others  saw  none  and 
shades  and  distinctions  of  shade  where,  to  others,  it  was  blank 
vacuity  or  darkness.  He  possessed,  in  an  eminent  degree,  that 
faculty  which  peoples  the  universe  with  tenuous  and  gossamer 
23 


354  SHELLEY 

existences,  which  sees  a  faery  world  in  drops  of  dew,  which 
sports  with  the  creatures  of  the  elements,  which  is  of  finer  in- 
sight and  more  spiritual  texture  than  the  brains  of  ordinary 
mortals.  If  Shelley  errs  in  the  excessive  use  of  this  faculty, 
we  are  also  indebted  to  it  for  some  of  the  most  beautiful  con- 
ceptions that  ever  adorned  the  pages  of  poetry." — Parke 
Godwin. 

"  If  Coleridge  is  the  sweetest  of  our  poets,  Shelley  is  at 
once  the  most  ethereal  and  the  most  gorgeous ;  the  one  who 
has  clothed  his  thoughts  in  draperies  of  the  most  evanescent 
and  most  magnificent  words  and  imagery." — Leigh  Hunt. 

"  Excess  of  imagination  makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  re- 
alize and  reconcile  himself  to  his  surroundings.  .  .  .  The 
fact  is,  Shelley  was  a  poet — and  a  poet  in  whom  the  imagina- 
tion was  disproportionally  developed.  He  was  a  creature  not 
of  reason,  not  of  intellect,  not  of  moral  purpose,  not  of  pas- 
sion, but  of  feelings  and  imaginations." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  If  greatness  in  poetry  consisted  in  a  succession  of  daz- 
zling images  and  a  rapid  flow  of  splendid  verse,  Shelley  would 
be  entitled  to  almost  the  first  place  in  literature." — W.  J. 
Courthope. 

"  He  possessed  an  imagination  marvellously  endowed  with 
the  power  to  give  shape  and  hue  to  the  most  shadowy  abstrac- 
tions which  his  soaring  mind  clutched  on  the  vanishing  points 
of  human  intelligence ;  a  fancy  quick  to  discern  the  most  re- 
mote analogies,  brilliant,  excursive,  aerial,  affluent  in  graceful 
and  felicitous  images." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  His  mode  of  thinking  is  not  according  to  the  terrestrial 
conditions  of  time,  place,  cause  and  effect,  variety  of  race,  cli- 
mate, and  costume.  His  persons  are  shapes,  winged  forms, 
modernized  versions  of  Grecian  mythology,  or  mortals  highly 
allegorized ;  and  their  movements  are  vague,  swift,  and  inde- 
pendent of  ordinary  physical  laws." — David  Masson. 

"  The  strong  imagination  of  Shelley  made  him  an  idolater 
in  his  own  despite.  Out  of  the  most  indefinite  terms  of  a  cold, 


SHELLEY  355 

hard,  dark,  metaphysical  system  he  made  a  gorgeous  Pantheon, 
full  of  beautiful,  majestic,  and  life-like  forms.  He  turned 
atheism  itself  into  a  mythology,  rich  with  visions  as  glorious 
as  the  gods  that  live  in  the  marble  of  Phidias  or  the  virgii 
saints  that  smile  on  us  from  the  canvas  of  Murillo.  The 
spirit  of  Beauty,  the  Principle  of  Good,  the  Principle  of  Evil, 
when  he  treated  of  them,  ceased  to  be  abstractions.  They 
took  shape  and  color.  They  were  no  longer  mere  words  but 
intelligible  forms;  '  fair  humanities;  '  objects  of  love,  adora- 
tion, or  fear." — Macaulay. 

"  His  images  pass  before  the  mind  like  frost-work  at  moon- 
light, strangely  beautiful,  glittering  and  rare,  but  of  transient 
duration  and  dream-like  interest." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  From  hard  realities,  from  weariness  of  beholding  oppres- 
sion, Shelley  rose  like  his  own  '  Skylark  '  into  the  trackless 
ether  of  imagination,  which  he  filled  with  a  glorious  music 
and  a  quiver  of  joyous  wings." — Austin  Dobson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  Sensitive  Plant  in  a  garden  grew ; 

And  the  young  winds  fed  it  with  silver  dew ; 
And  it  opened  its  fan-like  leaves  to  the  light, 
And  closed  them  beneath  the  kisses  of  Night. 

And  the  Spring  arose  on  the  garden  fair, 
Like  the  spirit  of  Love  felt  everywhere  ; 
And  each  flower  and  herb  on  earth's  dark  breast 
Rose  from  the  dreams  of  its  wintry  rest." 

—  The  Sensitive  Plant. 
"  Evening  came  on  ; 

The  beams  of  sunset  hung  their  rainbow  hues 
High  'mid  the  shifting  domes  of  sheeted  spray 
That  canopied  his  path  o'er  the  waste  deep  ; 
Twilight,  ascending  slowly  from  the  east, 
Entwined  in  duskier  wreaths  her  braided  locks 
O'er  the  fair  front  and  radiant  eyes  of  day  : 
Night  followed,  clad  with  stars." — Alastor. 


356  SHELLEY 

"  I  sift  the  snow  on  the  mountains  below, 
And  their  great  pines  groan  aghast ; 
And  all  the  night  'tis  my  pillow  white, 
While  I  sleep  in  the  arms  of  the  Blast. 
Sublime  on  the  towers  of  my  skyey  bowers 
Lightning  my  pilot  sits  ; 
In  a  cavern  under  is  fettered  the  Thunder, 
It  struggles  and  howls  at  fits. 
O'er  earth  and  ocean  with  gentle  motion 
This  pilot  is  guiding  me, 
Lured  by  the  love  of  the  Genii  that  move 
In  the  depths  of  the  purple  sea  ; 
Over  the  rills  and  the  crags  and  the  hills, 
Over  the  lakes  and  the  plains, 
Wherevej  he  dream  under  mountain  or  stream 
The  Spirit  he  loves  remains ; 
And  I  all  the  while  bask  in  heaven's  blue  smile, 
Whilst  he  is  dissolving  in  rains." — 7 he  Cloud. 

7.  Intensity. — "  Shelley's  life  was  intense,  and  though 
>nly  in  his  thirtieth  year  when  his  beloved  element  wrapped  him 
in  the  embrace  of  death,  the  snows  of  premature  age  flecked  his 
auburn  locks ;  and  in  sensation  and  experience  he  was  wont 
to  say  he  had  far  out-sped  the  calendar." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 
"  Like  an  improvisatore,  he  gives  rein  to  his  fancy,  and 
dashes  wildly  onward  wherever  the  bewildering  trains  of  thick- 
coming  associations  may  lead.  He  was  mastered  by  his  genius 
rather  than  master  of  it.  It  was  chiefly  in  the  glow  and  in- 
tensity of  his  sentiments  that  the  fast  fusing  power  of  his  im- 
agination was  manifest.  His  heart,  burning  with  the  purest 
fires  of  love,  seemed  to  melt  all  nature  into  a  liquid  mass  of 
good  ness. ' '  — Parke  Godwin . 

11  The  consuming  intensity,  indeed,  with  which  his  soul 
burned  within  him  at  the  sight  and  thought  of  tyranny, 
amounted  almost  to  madness.  It  ran  along  his  veins  like  a 
tingling  fire.  His  bursts  of  vehement  feeling  appear  occasion- 
ally to  rend  and  tear  his  frame  in  their  passionate  utter- 


SHELLEY  357 

ance.  .  .  .  What  he  felt  and  thought,  he  felt  and  thought 
with  such  intensity  as  to  make  his  life  identical  with  his 
verse." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Shelley  composed  with  all  his  faculties,  mental,  emotional, 
and  physical,  at  the  utmost  strain,  at  a  white  heat  of  intense 
fervor,  striving  to  attain  one  object,  the  truest  and  most  pas- 
sionate Investiture  for  the  thoughts  which  had  inflamed  his 
ever-quick  imagination.  ...  In  his  intense  enthusiasm 
he  lost  his  hold  on  common  sense,  which  might  have  saved 
him  from  the  puerility  of  arrogant  iconoclasm.  All  his  sensa- 
tions were  abnormally  acute,  and  his  ever  active  imagination 
confused  the  borderlands  of  the  actual  and  the  visionary.  He 
was  entirely  a  child  of  impulse,  lived  and  longed  for  high- 
strung  emotion,  simple,  all  absorbing,  all  penetrating  emotion, 
going  straight  on  in  one  direction  to  its  object,  hating  and 
resenting  whatever  opposed  its  progress  thitherward." — John 
Addington  Symonds. 

"An  idea,  an  emotion  grew  upon  his  brain,  his  breast  heaved, 
his  frame  shook,  his  nerves  quivered  with  the  '  harmonious 
madness  '  of  imaginative  concentration." — Walter  Bagehot. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  An  old,  blind,  mad,  despised,  and  dying  king, 
Princes,  the  dregs  of  their  dull  race,  who  flow 
Through  public  scorn — mud  from  a  muddy  spring, — 
Rulers  who  neither  see  nor  feel  nor  know, 
But,  leech-like,  to  their  fainting  country  cling, 
Till  they  drop,  blind  in  blood,  without  a  blow, — 
A  people  starved  and  stabbed  in  the  unfilled  field, — 
An  army  which  liberticide  and  prey 
Makes  as  a  two-edged  sword  to  all  who  wield, — 
Golden  and  sjanguine  laws,  which  tempt  and  slay, — 
Religion  Christless,  Godless — a  book  sealed  ; 
A  Senate — Time's  worst  statute  unrepealed — 
Are  graves  from  which  a  glorious  phantom  may 
Burst  to  illumine  our  tempestuous  day." — England  in  1819. 


358  ,  SHELLEY 

"  Oh  let  a  father's  curse  be  on  thy  soul, 

And  let  a  daughter's  hope  be  on  thy  tomb, 
And  both  on  thy  gray  head  a  leaden  cowl 

To  weigh  thee  down  to  thine  approaching  doom ! 

I  curse  thee  by  a  parent's  outraged  love  j 
By  hopes  long  cherished  and  too  lately  lost ; 

By  gentle  feelings  thou  couldst  never  prove  ; 
By  griefs  which  thy  stern  nature  never  crossed." 

—  To  the  Lord  Chancellor. 

"  Horses,  oxen,  have  a  home 
When  from  daily  toil  they  come  ; 
Household  dogs,  when  the  wind  roars, 
Find  a  home  within  warm  doors  ; 

Asses,  swine,  have  litter  spread, 
And  with  fitting  food  are  fed  ; 
All  things  have  a  home  but  one — 
Thou,  O  Englishman,  hast  none ! 

This  is  Slavery  !     Savage  men, 
Or  wild  beasts  within  a  den, 
Would  endure  not  as  ye  do ; 
But  such  ills  they  never  knew." 

—  The  Masque  of  Anarchy. 

8.  Taste  for  the  Horrible.— "Shelley  not  infrequently 
and  purposely  dips  into  curdling  subjects,  simply  for  the  sake 
of  the  chill  to  the  blood,  the  vibration  of  the  nerves.  There 
is  not  one  of  his  longer  poems  in  which  he  does  not  alternate 
the  breathless  upward  flight  of  his  own  skylark  with  occa- 
sional plunges  into  a  weird  world  of  morbid  horrors.  .  .  . 
There  was  mingled  with  all  his  beauty  a  mind  that  was  cer- 
tainly unearthly,  a  vein  of  unearthly  and  ghastly  delight  in 
violating  natural  instinct,  as  illustrated,  for  instance,  to  take  a 
very  mild  example,  in  the  ghoulish  prescription  which  he 
wrote  out  under  a  household  recipe  of  Mary  Godwin's.  His 
early  poems,  especially,  are  full  of  wormy  horrors,  and  the 


SHELLEY  359 

loathsomeness  of  the  incidents  on  which  the  plot  of  '  The 
Cenci '  turns  evidently  had  a  dreadful  fascination  for  him." 
— R.  H.  Hutton. 

11  So  far,  indeed,  from  Shelley's  having  a  peculiar  tendency 
to  dwell  on  and  prolong  the  sensation  of  pleasure,  he  has  a 
perverse  tendency  to  draw  out  into  lingering  keenness  the 
torture  of  agony.  The  night-shade  is  as  common  in  his 
poems  as  the  daisy." — Walter  Bagehot. 

11  He  has  shown  himself  what  the  dramatist  needs  to  be — 
as  able  to  face  the  light  of  heaven  as  of  hell,  to  handle  the 
fires  of  evil  as  to  brighten  the  beauties  of  things." — A.  C. 
Swinburne. 

"  He  turns  to  darkness  and  mystery  and  despair  and  hor- 
ror wantonly,  when  all  the  sweeter  secrets  of  nature  are  open 
to  him,  and  without  knowing,  with  the  most  curious  obtuse- 
ness  in  the  midst  of  his  genius,  unfolds  all  his  horrors  and 
misery.  He  revelled  in  the  tempestuous  loveliness  of  terror." 
— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  In  '  The  Sensitive  Plant '  .  .  .  one  curious  idiosyn- 
crasy is  more  prominent  than  any  other ;  .  .  .  it  is 
the  tendency  to  be  fascinated  by  whatever  is  ugly  and  revolt- 
ing, so  that  he  cannot  withdraw  his  thoughts  from  it  till  he 
has  described  it  in  language  powerful,  it  is  true,  and  poetic, 
when  considered  as  to  its  fitness  for  the  end  desired,  but  in 
force  of  these  very  excellences  in  the  means,  nearly  as  revolt- 
ing as  the  objects  themselves." — George  MacDonald. 

"His  hungry  craving  was  for  intellectual  beauty  and  the 
delight  it  yields;  if  not  that,  then  for  horror,  anything  to 
thrill  the  nerves,  though  it  should  curdle  the  blood  and  make 
the  flesh  creep. ' '— /.  C.  Shatrp. 

"  I  agree  with  Mr.  Gilfillan  heartily  in  protesting  against 
the  thoughtless  assertion  of  some  writer  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review — that  Shelley  at  all  selected  the  story  of  his  '  Cenci ' 
on  account  of  its  horrors  or  that  he  has  found  pleasure  in 
dwelling  on  those  horrors." — De  Quincey. 


360  SHELLEY 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  plants  at  whose  name  the  verse  feels  loth 
Filled  the  place  with  a  monstrous  undergrowth, 
Prickly  and  pulpous  and  blistering  and  blue, 
Livid,  and  starred  with  a  lurid  dew. 

Their  moss  rotted  off  them  flake  by  flake, 
Till  the  thick  stalk  stuck  like  a  murderer's  stake, 
Where  rags  of  loose  flesh  yet  tremble  on  high, 
Infecting  the  winds  that  wander  by." 

—  The  Sensitive  Plant. 

11  How  comes  this  hair  undone  ? 

Its  wandering  strings  must  be  what  blind  me  so, 
And  yet  I  tied  it  fast.— Oh  horrible  ! 
The  pavement  sinks  under  my  feet !  the  walls 
Spin  round  !  I  see  a  woman  weeping  there, 
And  standing  calm  and  motionless,  whilst  I 
Slide  giddily  as  the  world  reels  ! — My  God  ! 
The  beautiful  blue  heaven  is  flecked  with  blood ! 
The  sunshine  on  the  floor  is  black !  the  air 
Is  changed  to  vapors  such  as  the  dead  breathe 
In  charnel  pits  !     Pah  !     I  am  choked  ! 

There  creeps 

A  clinging,  black,  contaminating  mist 
About  me — 'tis  substantial,  heavy,  thick  ; 
I  cannot  pluck  it  from  me,  for  it  glues 
My  fingers  and  limbs  to  one  another, 
And  eats  into  my  sinews,  and  dissolves 
My  flesh  to  a  pollution,  poisoning 
The  subtle,  pure,  and  inmost  spirit  of  life  ! 
My  God  !  I  never  knew  what  the  mad  felt 
Before  ;  for  I  am  mad  beyond  all  doubt !  " —  The  Cenci. 

"  Methought  that  grate  was  lifted,  and  the  seven 
Who  brought  me  thither,  four  stiff  corpses  bare, 
And  from  the  frieze  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven 
Hung  them  on  high  by  the  entangled  hair ; 


SHELLEY  36l 

A  woman's  shape,  now  lank  and  cold  and  blue, 

The  dwelling  of  the  many-colored  worm, 

Hung  there  ;  the  white  and  hollow  cheek  I  drew 

To  my  dry  lips — What  radiance  did  inform 

Those  horny  eyes  ?  whose  was  that  withered  form  ?  " 

— Revolt  of  Islam. 

9.  Fearlessness— Sincerity — High   Ideals.—"  He 

was  no  tongue-hero,  no  fine  virtue  prattler.  He  did  not 
speak  from  his  lungs  but  from  his  soul.  And  sooner  than  be- 
tray one  honest  conviction  of  his  intellect,  sooner  than  award 
'  mouth-honor'  to  what  he  hated  as  cruelty  and  oppression,  he 
was  willing  to  have  his  genius  derided  and  his  name  defamed. 
.  .  .  He  was  always  terribly  in  earnest.  What  he  felt 
and  thought,  he  felt  and  thought  with  such  intensity  as  to 
make  his  life  identical  with  his  verse.  He  was  a  hero  in  the 
epic  life  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Ideas,  abstractions,  which 
pass  like  flakes  of  snow  into  other  minds,  fell  upon  his  heart 
like  sparks  of  fire.  ...  He  desired  society  to  be  pure,  free, 
unselfish,  devoted  to  the  realization  of  goodness  and  beauty ; 
and  he  believed  it  capable  of  that  exaltation.  ...  No 
man  ever  lived  with  a  deeper  and  more  inextinguishable  thirst 
to  promote  human  liberty  and  happiness." — E.  P.  Wliipple. 

"  One  of  the  first  things  to  be  observed  is  the  elevated  con- 
ception which  he  had  formed,  and  always  strove  to  carry 
with  him,  of  the  true  function  and  destiny  of  the  poet.  The 
vocation  of  the  bard  impressed  him  as  the  highest  of  all  voca- 
tions. .  .  .  No  poet  that  has  come  after  him,  and  few 
that  were  gone  before  him,  had  equal  power  of  stirring  within 
the  soul  of  humanity  such  noble  aspirations,  such  fervent 
love  of  freedom,  such  high  resolves  in  the  cause  of  virtue  and 
intelligence,  and  such  prophetic  yearnings  for  the  better 
future . "  — Parke  Godwin . 

"  There  is  a  wisdom  which  the  world  sometimes  counts  as 
folly — that  which  consists  in  devotion  at  all  hazards  to  an 
ideal,  to  what  stands  with  us  for  the  highest  truth,  sacred  jus- 


362  SHELLEY 

tice,  purest  love.  And  assuredly  the  tendency  of  Shelley's 
poetry,  however  we  may  venerate  ideals  other  than  his,  is  to 
quicken  the  sense  that  there  is  such  an  exalted  wisdom  as  this 
and  to  stimulate  us  to  its  pursuit.  .  .  .  Shelley  at  the  age 
of  nineteen  was  possessed  by  an  inextinguishable  hope  for  the 
world  and  an  enthusiasm  of  humanity  which  never  ceased  to 
inspire  his  deeds  and  words.  .  .  .  He  had  a  conviction 
that  it  is  in  the  power  of  everyone,  young  or  old,  to  dc  some- 
thing to  bring  nearer  the  world's  great  age ;  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  everyone  to  contribute  something  to  the  public  good. 
Shelley,  in  'Alastor,'  would  rebuke  the  seeker  for 
beauty  and  the  seeker  for  truth>  however  high-minded,  who 
attempts  to  exist  without  human  sympathy;  and  he  would 
rebuke  the  ever-unsatisfied  idealist  in  his  own  heart. 
It  was,  as  Shelley  believed,  in  a  peculiar  degree  a  poet's  duty 
to  sustain  the  hopes  and  aspirations  of  men  in  their  movements 
of  advance  and  at  the  same  time  to  endeavor  to  hold  their 
passions  in  check  by  presenting  high  ideals  and  showing  that 
the  better  life  of  society  is  not  to  be  rung  oat  of  the  air  by 
sudden  and  desperate  snatching.  .  .  .  Shelley  is  abso- 
lutely free  from  any  touch  of  untruthfulness  in  his  opinions. 
No  idea  of  self-restraint  would  ever  make  him  hide  his  views. 
He  could  always  believe  what  he  wished  to  believe 
and  bring  himself  to  see  facts  not  as  they  were  but  as  they 
ought  to  be." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  Whatever  Shelley  was,  he  was  with  an  admirable  sin- 
cerity. It  was  not  always  truth  that  he  thought  and  spoke ; 
but  in  the  purity  of  truth  he  spoke  and  thought  always." 
— Robert  Browning. 

"  No  man  was  more  single-minded,  none  a  more  ardent 
lover  of  abstract  truth  and  ideal  virtue."-—  W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  Balance  against  all  the  ill  that  you  can  ever  think  of  him 
that  he  was  a  man  able  to  live  wretched  for  the  sake  of  speak- 
ing sincerely  what  he  supposed  to  be  truth,  willing  to  die  for 
the  good  of  his  fellows." — Margaret  Puller  Ossoli. 


SHELLEY  363 

"  There  is  in  Shelley  at  once  a  singularly  ethereal  nature 
and  a  singularly  unthinking  defiance  of  everything  in  human 
emotion  which  does  not  at  once  explain  itself." — R.  H. 
Hutton. 

' '  The  cause  for  regret  is  that  so  few  should  have  paid 
homage  to  his  pure  and  sincere  intentions.  Where  can  we 
find  an  individual  in  modern  history  of  more  exalted  aims 
than  Shelley?  I  honor  Shelley  as  that  rare  character — a  sin- 
cere man." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  He  was  the  sincerest  and  most  truthful  of  human  creat- 
ures."— De  Quineey. 

"  The  cardinal  characteristic  of  his  nature  was  an  implaca- 
ble antagonism  to  shams  and  conventions,  which  passed  too 
easily  into  impatient  rejection  of  established  forms  as  worse 
than  useless.  ...  To  the  world  he  presented  the  rare 
spectacle  of  a  man  passionate  for  truth  and  unreservedly  obe- 
dient to  the  right  as  he  discerned  it.  ...  There  was 
ever  present  in  his  nature  an  effort,  an  aspiration  after  the 
better  than  the  best  this  world  can  show,  which  prompted 
him  to  blend  the  choicest  products  of  his  thought  and  fancy 
with  the  fairest  image  borrowed  from  the  earth  on  which  he 
lived.  He  never  willingly  composed,  except  under  the  im- 
pulse to  body  forth  a  vision  of  the  love  and  light  and  life 
which  was  the  spirit  of  the  power  which  he  worshipped." — 
John  Addington  Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  is  a  nobler  glory,  which  survives 
Until  our  being  fades,  and,  solacing 
All  human  care,  accompanies  its  change  ; 
Deserts  not  Virtue  in  the  dungeon's  gloom, 
And,  in  the  precincts  of  the  palace,  guides 
His  footsteps  through  that  labyrinth  of  crime  ; 
Imbues  his  lineaments  with  dauntlessness, 
Even  when  from  Power's  avenging  hand  he  takes 


364  SHELLEY 

Its  sweetest,  last,  and  noblest  title— death  ; 
The  consciousness  of  good,  which  neither  gold 
Nor  sordid  fame  nor  hope  of  heavenly  bliss 
Can  purchase  ;  but  a  life  of  resolute  good, 
Unalterable  will,  quenchless  desire 
Of  universal  happiness." — Queen  Mab. 

"  What  are  numbers,  knit  by  force  or  custom  ? 
Man  who  man  would  be 
Must  rule  the  empire  of  himself  in  it ! 
Must  be  supreme,  establishing  his  throne 
On  vanquished  will,  quelling  the  anarchy 
Of  hopes  and  fears,  being  himself  alone." — Sonnet. 

"  And  when  Reason's  voice, 

Loud  as  the  voice  of  Nature,  shall  have  waked 
The  nations ;  and  mankind  perceive  that  vice 
Is  discord,  war,  and  misery — that  virtue 
Is  peace  and  happiness  and  harmony  ; 
When  man's  maturer  nature  shall  disdain 
The  playthings  of  its  childhood  ;  kingly  glare 
Will  lose  its  power  to  dazzle  ;  its  authority 
Will  silently  pass  by  ;  the  gorgeous  throne 
Shall  stand  unnoticed  in  the  regal  hall 
Fast  falling  to  decay  ;  whilst  falsehood's  trade 
Shall  be  as  hateful  and  unprofitable 
As  that  of  truth  is  now." — Queen  Mab. 

10.  Love  of  Liberty  —  Independence  —  Lawless- 
ness.— "He  hated  oppression  and  stormed  against  it;  but 
then  all  rule  and  authority  he  regarded  as  an  oppression.  He 
was  altogether  a  child  of  impulse — of  impulse  one,  total,  all- 
absorbing.  And  the  impulse  that  came  to  him  he  followed 
whithersoever  it  went,  without  questioning  either  himself  or 
it."—/.  C.  Shairp. 

"If  love,  justice,  hope,  freedom,  fraternity  be  real,  then 
so  is  the  wiser  part  of  the  inspiration  of  Shelley's  radiant 
song.  .  .  .  But  at  the  root  of  all  was  an  absolute  refusal 


SHELLEY  365 

to  submit  to  any  sort  of  discipline  or  to  acknowledge  any 
form  of  authority.  .  .  .  Any  one  who  attempted  to  re- 
strain him  he  dubbed  a  tyrant,  and  he  invariably  refused  to 
learn  any  thing  when  he  was  taught.  .  .  .  Always  preach- 
ing justice  and  tolerance,  there  are  few  who  have  formed 
more  unjust  opinions  and  indulged  in  more  intolerant  out- 
bursts. ' ' — Edward  Dowden. 

11  Neither  the  cruel  jibes  of  his  fellows  nor  menaces  of  pun- 
ishment on  the  part  of  his  superiors  could  bend  a  will  whose 
single  law  was  the  self-imposed  law  of  truth.  He  rejected  an 
obedience  which  could  only  be  performed  at  the  expense  of 
self-respect.  .  .  .  An  over-fine  notion  of  freedom  brought 
him  into  conflict  with  masters  and  laws.  .  .  .  Every  page 
of  '  Queen  Mab '  is  a  fiery  protest  against  the  frauds  and  des- 
potisms of  priest  and  king.  ...  To  him  the  French 
Revolution  was  not  a  failure.  .  .  .  The  evils  of  that 
frightful  upturning  of  society  seemed  to  him,  as  they  now 
seem  to  every  observant  mind,  transient,  while  the  good  was 
durable. ' '  — Parke  Godwin. 

"  His  whole  life  through  was  a  denial  of  external  law  and 
a  substitution  in  its  place  of  internal  sentiment. 
Shelley's  cry  is,  '  There  is  a  law,  and  therefore  I  am  miserable. 
Why  should  not  the  law  be  abolished?  Away  with  it,  for  it 
interferes  with  my  sentiments.'  .  .  .  Lawless  love  is 
Shelley's  expressed  ideal  of  the  relation  of  the  sexes,  and  his 
justice,  his  benevolence,  his  pity,  are  all  equally  lawless."  — 
Charles  Kingsley. 

"  Freedom  he  regarded  as  the  dearest  boon  of  existence. 
Highly  imaginative,  susceptible,  and  brave,  even  in 
boyhood  he  reverenced  the  honest  convictions  of  his  own 
mind  above  success  or  authority." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  In  Shelley  we  see  a  certain  type  of  revolutionist,  born  out 
of  due  time,  and  directed  to  the  bloodless  field  of  literature." 
— Edmund  Gosse. 

"  His  passionate  love  of  liberty,  his  loathing  for  intoler- 


366  SHELLEY 

ance,  his  impatience  of  control  .  .  .  combined  to  make 
him  the  Quixotic  champion  of  extreme  opinions." — John 
Addington  Symonds. 

"  l  Prometheus  Unbound,'  however  remote  the  foundation 
of  its  subject  matter  and  unactual  its  executive  treatment, 
does  in  reality  express  the  most  modern  of  conceptions — the 
utmost  reach  of  speculation  of  a  mind  which  burst  up  all 
crusts  of  custom  and  prescription  like  a  volcano,  and  imaged 
forth  a  future  wherein  man  should  be  indeed  the  autocrat  and 
the  renovated  renovation  of  his  planet.  .  .  .  It  is  the  ideal 
poem  of  perpetual  and  triumphant  progression — the  Atlantis 
of  Man  Emancipated." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"He  was  in  early  years  first  a  revolter;  he  took  nothing 
upon  authority ;  he  acknowledged  no  validity  in  the  customs 
and  beliefs  which  past  experience  had  bequeathed  to  men : 
he  must  examine  every  conclusion  anew  and  accept  or  regret 
it  by  the  light  of  his  own  limited  thought  and  observation." 
— G.  £.  Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  glorious  people  vibrated  again 

The  lightning  of  the  nations  :  Liberty, 

From  heart  to  heart,  from  tower  to  tower,  o'er  Spain, 

Scattering  contagious  fire  into  the  sky, 

Gleamed.     My  soul  spurned  the  chains  of  its  dismay, 

And  in  the  rapid  plumes  of  song 

Clothed  itself,  sublime  and  strong — 

As  a  young  eagle  soars  the  morning  clouds  among, 

Hovering  inverse  o'er  its  accustomed  prey  : 

Till  from  its  station  in  the  heaven  of  Fame 

The  Spirit's  whirlwind  rapt  it ;  and  the  ray 

Of  the  remotest  sphere  of  living  flame 

Which  paves  the  void  was  from  behind  it  flung, 

As  foam  from  the  ship's  swiftness,  when  there  came 

A  voice  out  of  the  deep  ;  1  will  record  the  same." 

—  Ode  to  Liberty. 


SHELLEY 

As  an  eagle  fed  with  morning 

Scorns  the  embattled  tempest's  warning 

When  she  seeks  her  aerie  hanging 

In  the  mountain-cedar's  hair, 

And  her  brood  expect  the  clanging 

Of  her  wings  through  the  wild  air, 

Sick  with  famine ;  Freedom  so 

To  what  Greece  remaineth  now 

Returns.     Her  hoary  ruins  glow 

Like  orient  mountains  lost  in  day  ; 

Beneath  the  safety  of  her  wings 

Her  renovated  nurslings  play, 

And  in  the  naked  lightenings 

Of  truth  they  purge  their  dazzled  eyes. 

Let  Freedom  leave,  where'er  she  flies, 

A  desert  or  a  paradise  ; 

Let  the  beautiful  and  the  brave 

Share  her  glory  or  a  grave  !  "  — Hellas. 

Honey  from  silk-worms  who  can  gather, 
Or  silk  from  the  yellow  bee  ? 

The  grass  may  grow  in  winter-weather 
As  soon  as  hate  in  me. 

Hate  men  who  cant  and  men  who  pray 
And  men  who  rail,  like  thee  ; 

An  equal  passion  to  repay 
They  are  not  coy  like  me. 

Or  seek  some  slave  of  power  and  gold 
To  be  that  dear  heart's  mate  ; 

Thy  love  will  move  that  bigot  cold 
Sooner  than  me  thy  hate. 


36; 


A  passion  like  the  one  I  prove 

Cannot  divided  be  : 
I  hate  thy  want  of  truth  and  love — 

How  should  I  then  hate  thee  ?  " 

— Lines  to  a  Critic. 


368  SHELLEY 

II.  Optimism— Faith  in   Humanity.— "  It  was  his 

aim  as  poet  to  send  forth  sounds  that  might  shake  the  reign 
of  '  Anarch  Custom  '  and  hasten  the  blessed  era  in  whose 
coming  he  believed." — David Masson. 

"  He  quickens  within  us  a  sense  of  the  possibilities  of  great- 
ness and  goodness  hidden  in  man  and  woman.  .  .  .  And 
who  has  heartened  us  more  than  Shelley,  with  all  his  errors, 
to  love  freedom,  to  hope  all  things,  to  endure  all  things,  and 
even  while  the  gloom  gathers  to  have  faith  in  the  dawn  of 
light  ?  ' ' — Edward  Dow  den. 

"All  the  malignity  of  his  foes  and  all  the  suffering  which 
fell  to  his  lot  only  served  to  make  the  flame  of  his  philanthropy 
burn  the  brighter  and  with  a  purer  radiance." — Walter 
Bagehot. 

"  Though  he  experienced  the  malevolence  of  humanity 
himself,  he  met  inhumanity  by  humanity,  and  translated  into 
his  daily  life  the  spirit  that  breathes  through  the  Beatitudes. 
He  counted  his  days  not  by  the  calendars  of  men  but  by  the 
calendar  of  nature.  Nothing  existed  that  to  him  was  not  a 
minister  of  grace." — G.  B.  Smith. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The  world's  great  age  begins  anew, 

The  golden  years  return, 

The  earth  doth  like  a  snake  renew 

Her  winter  weeds  outworn  : 

Heaven  smiles,  and  faiths  and  empires  gleam 

Like  wrecks  of  a  dissolving  dream. 

Another  Athens  shall  arise, 

And  to  remoter  time 

Bequeath,  like  sunset  to  the  skies, 

The  splendor  of  its  prime  ; 

And  leave,  if  nought  so  bright  may  live, 

All  earth  can  take  and  heaven  can  give." — Hellas. 


SHELLEY  369 


!<  Drive  my  dead  thoughts  over  the  universe, 
Like  withered  leaves,  to  quicken  a  new  birth  ; 
And,  by  the  incarnation  of  this  verse, 
Scatter,  as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth 
Ashes  and  sparks,  my  words  among  mankind  ! 
Be  through  my  lips  to  unawakened  earth 
The  trumpet  of  a  prophecy  !     Oh  Wind, 
If  Winter  comes,  can  Spring  be  far  behind  ?  " 

—  Ode  to  the  West  Wind. 

"  These  are  the  seals  of  that  most  firm  assurance 
Which  bars  the  pit  over  Destruction's  strength  ; 
And  if,  with  infirm  hand,  Eternity, 
Mother  of  many  acts  and  hours,  should  free 
The  serpent  that  would  clasp  her  with  his  length, 
These  are  the  spells  by  which  to  reassume 
An  empire  o'er  the  disentangled  doom. 

To  suffer  woes  which  hope  thinks  infinite  ; 
To  forgive  wrongs  darker  than  death  or  night ; 
To  defy  power  which  seems  omnipotent ; 
To  love  and  bear  ;  to  hope  till  hope  creates 
From  its  own  wreck  the  thing  it  contemplates ; 
Neither  to  change  nor  falter  nor  repent ; 
This,  like  thy  glory,  Titan,  is  to  be 
Good,  great,  and  joyous  ;  beautiful  and  free  ; 
This  alone  Life,  Joy,  Empire,  Victory  !  " 

— Prometheus  Unbound. 


12.  Sensualism  — Impulsiveness. — "I  rather  think 
that  the  late  Mr.  Bagehot  was  nearer  the  mark  when  he  as- 
serted that  in  Shelley  the  conscience  never  had  been  revealed 
— that  he  was  almost  entirely  without  conscience. 
Of  this  double  nature,  this  inward  strife  between  flesh  and 
spirit,  Shelley  knew  nothing.  .  .  .  Shelley  may  be  the 
prophet  of  a  new  morality,  but  it  is  one.  that  can  never  be 
realized  till  moral  law  has  been  obliterated  from  the  universe 
and  conscience  from  the  heart  of  man.  .  .  .  I  am  in- 
24 


370  SHELLEY 

clined  to  believe  that,  for  all  his  noble  impulses  and  aims,  he 
was  some  way  deficient  in  rational  and  moral  sanity." — J.  C. 
Shairp. 

"  '  Follow  your  instincts,'  is  his  one  moral  rule,  confound- 
ing the  very  lowest  animal  instincts  with  those  lofty  ideas  of 
right  which  it  was  the  will  of  Heaven  he  should  retain."— 
Charles  Kingsley. 

"  Shelley's  imagination  busied  itself  with  fusing  together 
mental  and  sensuous  impressions  into  symbols  of  rare  beauty. 
.  .  .  A  thin  world  of  distilled  loveliness  and  spontaneous 
instinct,  but  containing  nothing  that  could  be  called  the 
strength  of  divine  love." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Shelley  is  probably  the  most  remarkable  instance  of  the 
purely  impulsive  character,  to  comprehend  which  requires  a 
little  detail.  .  .  .  We  fancy  his  mind  placed  in  the  light 
of  thought,  with  pure  subtle  fancies  playing  to  and  fro.  On  a 
sudden  an  impulse  arises  ;  it  is  alone,  and  has  nothing  to  con- 
tend with  ;  it  cramps  the  intellect,  pushes  aside  the  fancies, 
constrains  the  nature ;  it  bolts  forward  into  action.  .  .  . 
The  '  Epipsychidion  '  could  not  have  been  written  by  a  man 
who  attached  a  moral  value  to  constancy  of  mind.  .  .  . 
The  evidence  of  Shelley's  poems  confirms  this  impression  of 
him.  The  characters  which  he  delineates  have  all  this  same 
kind  of  pure  impulse.  The  reforming  impulse  is  especially 
felt.  .  .  .  Shelley's  political  opinions  were  likewise  the 
effervescence  of  his  peculiar  nature.  The  love  of  liberty  is 
peculiarly  natural  to  the  simple  impulsive  mind." — Walter 
Bagehot. 

"  Shelley  had  all  the  merit  of  generous  aspirations  and  feel- 
ings, but  he  was  singularly  deficient  in  self-control.  He  was 
guided  entirely  by  his  impulses;  his  impulses  were  often  high 
and  lofty,  but  they  had  never  been  controlled." — Edward 
Dow  den. 

"  His  emotional  power  dominated  his  intellectual  power." 
— Parke  Godwin. 


SHELLEY  371 

"  His  movements  are  represented  as  rapid,  hurried,  and  un- 
certain. He  would  appear  and  disappear  suddenly  and  unex- 
pectedly ;  forget  appointments;  burst  into  wild  laughter, 
heedless  of  his  situation,  whenever  anything  struck  him  as 
peculiarly  ridiculous." — George  Mac  Donald. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  She  would  have  clasped  me  to  her  glowing  frame  ; 
Those  warm  and  odorous  lips  might  soon  have  shed 
On  mine  the  fragrance  and  the  invisible  flame 
Which  now  the  cold  winds  stole ;  she  would  have  laid 
Upon  my  languid  heart  her  dearest  head  ; 
I  might  have  heard  her  voice  tender  and  sweet  ; 
Her  eyes,  mingling  with  mine,  might  soon  have  fed 
My  soul  with  their  own  joy.     One  moment  yet 
I  gazed— we  parted  then,  never  again  to  meet !  " 

—  The  Revolt  of  Islam. 

"  See,  the  mountains  kiss  high  heaven, 
And  the  waves  clasp  one  another  ; 
No  sister  flower  would  be  forgiven 
If  it  disdained  its  brother  ; 

And  the  sunlight  clasps  the  earth, 
And  the  moonbeams  kiss  the  sea ; 

What  are  all  these  kissings  worth, 

If  thou  kiss  not  me  ?  " — Loves  Philosophy. 

"  Thus  to  be  lost  and  thus  to  sink  and  die 

Perchance  were  death  indeed  !     Constantia,  turn  ! 
In  thy  dark  eyes  a  power  like  light  doth  lie, 
Even  though  the  sounds  which  were  thy  voice  which  burn, 
Between  thy  lips,  are  laid  to  sleep  ; 
Within  thy  breath  and  on  thy  hair,  like  odor,  it  is  yet, 
And  from  thy  touch  like  fire  doth  leap. 
Even  while  I  write,  my  burning  cheeks  are  wet ; 
Alas  that  the  torn  heart  can  bleed  but  not  forget !  " 

—  To  Constantia 


BYRON,  1788-1824 

Biographical  Outline. —George  Gordon,  sixth  Lord 
Byron,  born  in  Hollis  Street,  London,  January  22,  1788; 
father,  "a  handsome  profligate,"  who  first  eloped  with  a 
marchioness,  then,  after  her  divorce,  married  her,  and  after 
her  death  married  Gordon's  mother  for  her  money;  Byron 
was  a  cripple  from  his  birth,  the  tendons  of  one  heel  being 
so  contracted  as  to  cause  a  limp;  Byron's  mother's  fortune  is 
soon  wasted,  all  except  an  income  of  ^£150  a  year,  on  which 
she  retires  to  Aberdeen  with  the  child,  and  lives  in  seclusion 
in  Queen  Street;  for  a  time  the  father  occupied  separate 
apartments  near  by,  and  sometimes  petted  the  child;  but  he 
soon  obtained  money  from  his  wife  or  his  sister  and  escaped 
to  France,  where  he  died  in  1791,  possibly  by  his  own  hand; 
soon  afterward  Mrs.  Byron's  income  is  raised  to  .£190,  on 
which  she  and  her  son  continue  to  live  ;  as  a  child  Byron  is 
treated  by  his  mother  with  alternate  violence  and  tenderness, 
sometimes  worshipped  and  at  others  called  "  a  lame  brat ;  " 
he  is  passionately  attached  to  his  nurse,  Mary  Gray,  and 
learns  from  Dr.  Ewing,  of  Aberdeen,  much  of  the  lore  of  the 
English  Bible  ;  Byron  first  attends  a  private  school,  then  learns 
some  Latin  from  the  son  of  his  shoemaker,  and  is  at  the 
Aberdeen  Grammar  School  from  1794  to  1798;  as  a  school- 
boy he  is  "warm-hearted,  pugnacious,  and  idle;"  during 
the  vacations  he  visits  the  mountain  districts  about  Ballanter, 
and  dates  thence  his  love  of  sublime  scenery ;  in  his  eighth 
year  he  falls  "  violently  "  in  love  with  a  cousin,  Mary  Driff, 
and  is  nearly  thrown  into  convulsions,  in  his  sixteenth  year, 
on  hearing  of  her  marriage. 

In  1794,  Byron  succeeds  to  the  peerage,  and  in  October, 

372 


BYRON  373 

1 798,  a  pension  of  ^£300  is  given  to  his  mother  by  the  Govern- 
ment ;  soon  afterward  she  goes  with  Byron  to  Newstead,  where 
there  was  a  property  belonging  to  the  family  worth  about 
^1,500  a  year;  Mrs.  Byron  now  settles  at  Nottingham,  and 
sends  the  boy  to  the  private  school  of  one  Rogers  ;  he  is  tortured 
by  the  remedies  applied  to  his  foot  by  a  quack  named  Lavendar, 
and  writes  a  lampoon  on  that  worthy  ;  in  1799  ^e  ^s  taken 
by  his  mother  to  London,  is  placed  under  the  care  of  a  skil- 
ful surgeon,  and  is  sent  to  Dr.  Glennie's  school,  near  by ; 
Glennie  finds  him  "  playful,  amiable,  and  intelligent,  ill- 
grounded  in  scholarship,  but  familiar  with  scriptures  and  a 
devourer  of  poetry  ;"  while  at  Glennie's,  Byron  reads  a 
pamphlet  account  of  a  shipwreck,  which  he  afterward  worked 
up  in  the  plot  of  his  "Don Juan,"  and  here  also  he  writes 
his  first  love-poem,  addressed  to  his  cousin,  Margaret  Parker, 
who  died  a  year  or  two  later  ;  Byron  declares  that  his  passion 
produced  its  "  usual  effect  "  in  preventing  sleep  and  appetite; 
by  the  summer  of  1801  Mrs.  Byron's  temper  and  her  med- 
dling with  the  discipline  of  the  boy  become  insupportable  to 
Glennie  and  to  Byron's  guardian,  Lord  Carlisle,  and  he  is 
sent  to  Harrow,  where  he  becomes  the  pupil  of  Dr.  Drury, 
who  wins  the  boy's  affection  and  respect  ;  Byron  detests  the 
"daily  drug"  of  classical  lessors,  and  is  always  "idle,  in 
mischief,  or  at  play,"  but  reads  voraciously  by  fits,  and  ex- 
cels in  declamation ;  he  hates  Harrow  until  his  last  year  and 
a  half,  when  he  becomes  a  leader;  in  spite  of  his  lameness  he 
is  an  athlete,  and  fights  Lord  Calthorpe  for  writing  "  damned 
atheist  "  under  his  name  ;  in  March,  1805,  he  leads  the  school- 
boys in  a  revolt  against  the  appointment  of  Dr.  Butler,  Drury's 
successor,  whom  Byron  afterward  satirized  in  "  Hours  of 
Idleness  "  under  the  name  of  "  Pomposus ;  "  he  forms  warm 
attachments  at  Harrow,  and  once  offers  to  take  half  the  thrash- 
ing inflicted  by  a  bully  on  Sir  Robert  Peel ;  during  his 
Harrow  days  Byron  often  visits  Annesley  Hall,  the  seat  of  his 
distant  relatives,  and  there  falls  desperately  in  love  with  his 


374  BYRON 

cousin,  Mary  Anne  Chaworth  ;  he  is  greatly  agitated  on  hear- 
ing of  her  marriage,  in  1805,  and  this  passion  seems  to  have 
left  the  most  permanent  traces  on  his  life. 

In  October,  1805,  he  enters  Trinity  College  as  a  "noble- 
man ;  "  he  is  described  by  his  tutor  as  "  a  youth  of  tumultu- 
ous passions,"  fond  of  riding,  skating,  and  boxing,  the  patron 
of  a  prize-fighter,  and  a  marvellous  swimmer ;  in  August,  1807, 
he  boasts  of  swimming  three  miles  in  the  Thames  at  London  ; 
he  travels  in  a  two-horse  carriage  with  a  groom,  a  valet,  and 
two  dogs  ;  he  has  frequent  and  violent  quarrels  with  his 
mother,  one  of  which  ends  in  her  throwing  a  poker  and  tongs 
at  his  head  ;  he  is  fond  of  gambling,  and  at  one  time  travels 
with  a  girl  in  boy's  clothes  for  a  companion,  whom  he  intro- 
duces as  his  younger  brother;  he  admits,  in  1808,  being  in 
debt  nearly  ^10,000  ;  at  one  time  he  brings  a  bear  to  col- 
lege, and  insists  that  the  animal  sit  for  a  fellowship;  his 
attendance  at  Cambridge  is  very  irregular,  but  he  takes  M.A. 
July  4,  1808  ;  in  1813  he  presents  ^"1,000  to  a  college 
friend  in  financial  embarrassment ;  among  his  closest  friends 
at  Cambridge  are  John  C.  Hobhouse,  afterward  Lord  Brough- 
ton,  whose  friendship  with  Byron  lasted  during  life,  and  C. 
A.  Matthews,  a  most  decided  and  outspoken  atheist ;  in  his 
juvenile  letters  Byron  boasts  that  he  has  been  held  up  as  the 
"  votary  of  licentiousness  and  disciple  of  infidelity  "  and  that 
he  has  read  or  looked  through  historical  books  and  novels  "  by 
the  thousand  ;  "  his  memory  is  remarkable;  in  November, 
1806,  he  prints  privately  a  small  volume  of  poems  entitled 
"  Fugitive  Pieces,"  but  soon  destroys  all  but  two  copies  on 
the  protest  of  a  Southwell  clergyman  against  the  license  of  one 
poem;  in  January,  1807,  he  distributes  a  hundred  copies  of 
the  volume,  reprinted  without  the  offensive  poem,  under  the 
title  of  "  Poems  on  Various  Occasions  ;  "  this  volume  attracts 
some  favorable  notice,  and  in  the  following  summer  he  pub- 
lishes "  Hours  of  Idleness,"  a  collection  of  his  original  poems 
and  translations,  including  twenty  of  those  before  printed 


BYRON  375 

privately  ;  a  new  edition  of  the  "  Hours  "  appears  in  March, 
1808;  meantime,  in  January,  1808,  appears  the  famous  criti- 
cism of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  probably  written  by  Brough- 
am ;  Byron  at  once  "drank  three  bottles  of  claret  and  be- 
gan his  reply." 

On  leaving  Cambridge  he  settles  on  his  ancestral  seat, 
Newstead  Abbey,  then  in  ruinous  condition,  where  he  makes  a 
few  rooms  habitable,  and  enters  upon  life-long  litigation  to  re- 
cover other  inherited  property;  on  March  13,  1809,  he  takes 
his  seat  in  the  House  of  Lords;  his  "English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers  ' '  appears  during  the  same  month,  and 
reaches  a  second  edition  in  April ;  a  third  and  a  fourth  edi- 
tion appear  in  1810  and  1811,  but  the  fifth  edition,  prepared 
by  Byron  in  1811,  is  by  him  suppressed  because  many  of  his 
victims  have  then  become  friendly  ;  in  1817  Byron  tells  Mur- 
ray that  he  will  never  consent  to  the  republication  of  the 
satire;  during  the  spring  of  1809  he  entertains  his  college 
friends  at  Newstead,  where  they  dress  as  monks,  drink  wine 
from  a  human  skull,  and  otherwise  offend  the  proprieties ;  on 
July  2,  1809,  Byron  sails  for  Lisbon  with  Hobhouse  and 
three  servants ;  thence  he  rides  across  Spain  to  Seville  and 
Cadiz,  whence  he  sails  to  Gibraltar  ;  thence  to  Malta,  where 
he  meets  a  Mrs.  Spencer  Smith,  to  whom  he  afterward 
addresses  his  poem  "To  Florence"  and  stanzas  30-33  in 
"  Childe  Harold,"  Book  II.  ;  from  Malta  he  sails  to  Prevesa 
and  Tehelen,  and  narrowly  escapes  shipwreck ;  in  November 
he  travels  to  Missolonghi,  through  Acarnania,  with  a  guard  of 
Albanians ;  thence,  at  Christmas  time,  to  Athens,  where  he 
lodges  with  Mrs.  Macri,  widow  of  the  English  Vice-consul, 
whose  daughter  Theresa  is  Byron's  "  Maid  of  Athens  ;  " 
leaving  Athens  in  March,  1810,  Byron  visits,  successively, 
Ephesus,  Constantinople,  and  the  Troad,  and  on  May  3d  he 
accomplishes  the  celebrated  feat  of  swimming,  like  Leander, 
across  the  Hellespont  from  Sestos  to  Abydos;  Byron  leaves 
Constantinople  July  i4th,  and  returns  with  his  servant  to 


376  BYRON 

Athens,  while  Hobhouse  returns  to  England  ;  Byron  professes 
to  have  saved  a  girl  from  being  drowned  in  a  sack,  during  this 
voyage,  an  adventure  later  turned  to  account  in  ''The  Giaour ;" 
he  makes  a  tour  in  the  Morea,  is  severely  ill  with  a  fever  at 
Patras,  and  returns  to  spend  the  winter  of  1810-11  in  the 
Capuchin  monastery  at  Athens;  in  the  spring  of  1811  he  sails 
for  England,  stops  at  Malta,  and  reaches  London  July  i5th  ;  in 
a  letter  written  during  the  voyage  home  Byron  declares  that  he 
is  returning  "  embarrassed,  unsocial,  without  a  hope,  and  al- 
most without  a  desire  ;  "  he  had  spent  over  ^10,000  a  year 
at  Cambridge,  and  had  obtained  loans  from  the  Jews ;  in 
February,  1810,  his  creditors  had  threatened  the  sale  of  New- 
stead  ;  he  prepares  to  enter  the  army,  and  has  to  borrow 
money  with  which  to  reach  London  on  his  return  from  the 
East ;  while  in  London  he  hears  of  his  mother's  illness  ;  be- 
fore he  can  reach  her  she  dies,  August  i,  1811,  "  in  a  fit  of 
rage  caused  by  reading  the  upholsterer's  bills;"  the  loss  of 
his  mother  and  of  five  intimate  friends  during  four  months 
affects  Byron  deeply,  and  he  is  found  sobbing  over  his 
mother's  remains ;  the  lady  mentioned  in  his  poems  as 
"Thyrza,"  and  whom  he  seems  to  have  loved  passionately 
but  purely,  has  never  been  identified. 

In  October,  1811,  he  takes  lodgings  in  St.  James  Street, 
London,  where  he  shows  to  a  friend  the  first  two  cantos  of 
"  Childe  Harold,"  composed  while  he  was  abroad,  and 
"Hints  from  Horace,"  a  paraphrase  of  the  "  Ars  Poetica;" 
arrangements  are  made  to  publish  the  latter,  but,  apparently 
from  the  lack  of  a  good  classical  reviser,  it  does  not  appear  till 
after  Byron's  death;  "Childe  Harold"  is  refused  by  one 
publisher  because  of  the  attack  on  Lord  Elgin  as  the  despoiler 
of  the  Parthenon,  but  it  is  accepted  by  Murray,  who  continues 
thereafter  to  be  Byron's  publisher  ;  "  Childe  Harold  "  appears 
April  21,  1812,  and  is  astonishingly  successful ;  the  first  edi- 
tion is  sold  immediately,  and,  as  Byron  says,  he  "awoke  one 
morning  and  found  himself  famous ;  "  for  the  copyright  Mur- 


BYRON  377 

ray  pays  him  ^600,  which  Byron  gives  to  his  friend  Dallas, 
declaring  that  he  will  never  take  money  for  his  poems ;  during 
the  early  part  of  1812  Byron  makes  three  speeches  in  the 
House  of  Lords  ;  he  becomes  "  the  idol  of  the  sentimental 
part  of  society,"  and  meets  Moore,  Campbell,  and  Rogers  at 
a  dinner  given  by  the  latter,  where  Byron  confines  his  diet  to 
potatoes  and  vinegar — his  method  of  preventing  himself  from 
getting  too  fat ;  he  soon  becomes  intimate  with  Moore,  al- 
though, during  Byron's  absence,  Moore  had  sent  him  a  chal- 
lenge because  of  certain  lines  in  the  "English  Bards;  "  at 
this  time  Byron  is  described  by  Coleridge  and  others  as  a  man 
of  surpassing  physical  beauty ;  during  this  and  his  later  years 
he  practised  the  most  rigorous  diet  in  order  to  reduce  his 
weight,  and  often  lived  on  a  small  allowance  of  rice  alone  ;  at 
intervals  he  varied  this  rigor,  briefly,  with  the  most  excessive 
eating  and  drinking;  he  is  said  to  have  written  "  Don  Juan" 
"on  gin  and  water;"  in  the  spring  of  1813  he  publishes 
"  The  Waltz,"  which  he  disowns  on  its  failure  ;  "The  Giaour" 
appears  in  May,  1813,  "The  Bride  of  Abydos"  in  December, 
1813,  and  "The  Corsair"  in  January,  1814  ;  by  the  autumn  of 
1813  "The  Giaour"  reaches  a  fifth  edition,  when  it  is  increased 
from  400  to  1400  lines;  the  first  sketch  of  the  "Bride"  was 
written  in  four  nights,  and  the  ' '  Corsair  "  in  ten  days ;  the  latter 
was  hardly  revised  at  all,  and  14,000  copies  were  sold  in  a  single 
day  ;  in  April,  1814,  Byron  composes  his  ode  on  the  abdication 
of  Napoleon,  and  in  the  following  June  finishes  "  Lara,"  which 
is  published  in  August,  1814,  in  the  same  volume  with  Rogers's 
"Jacqueline;  "  Byron's  "Hebrew  Melodies,"  written  on  re- 
quest, appeared  with  music  in  January,  1815;  "  The  Siege  of 
Corinth"  and  "Parisina"  appear  in  January  and  February, 
1816,  and  Murray  pays  over  ^1,200  for  the  copyright  of  the 
two  poems;  about  this  time  Byron  refuses  to  take  1,000 
guineas  for  the  poems,  although  it  was  proposed  to  hand  over 
the  money  to  Godwin,  Coleridge,  and  Maturin  ;  he  afterward 
became  less  scrupulous  about  receiving  money  for  his  literary 


378  BYRON 

work;  meantime  Byron  was  prominent  in  London  society, 
was  recognized  as  a  second  Beau  Brummell,  and  engaged  in 
gayeties  as  a  member  of  half  a  dozen  London  clubs ;  he  en- 
ters into  intrigues  with  various  fashionable  women,  especially 
Lady  Caroline  Lamb. 

In  September,  1814,  he  offers  marriage  to  Miss  Milbanke,  a 
niece  of  Lady  Lamb,  a  scholarly  woman,  somewhat  prudish 
and  pedantic,  a  friend  of  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Miss  Siddons, 
and  heiress  to  a  considerable  fortune;  he  is  accepted,  and  is 
married  at  Seaham  near  Durham,  January  2,  1815  ;  in  the  fol- 
lowing March  they  settle  at  13  Piccadilly  Terrace,  London, 
where  they  remain  during  their  married  life ;  in  spite  of 
numerous  reports  to  the  contrary,  their  early  married  life 
seems  to  have  been  happy ;  but  Byron's  financial  troubles 
increased ;  he  had  obtained  ^25,000  from  a  forfeited  sale  of 
Newstead  in  1812,  but  this  had  soon  vanished,  and  in  Novem- 
ber, 1815,  he  is  obliged  to  sell  his  library ;  yet  he  still  refuses 
to  take  money  for  his  copyrights ;  he  becomes  a  zealous 
playgoer,  and  is  often  at  parties  "where  all  ends  in  hiccup 
and  happiness ;  "  in  July,  1815,  with  the  consent  and  approval 
of  Lady  Byron,  who  was  well  provided  for  by  her  own  inher- 
itance, Byron  wills  all  his  property  to  his  sister,  Mrs.  Leigh, 
and  her  children;  on  December  10,  1815,  his  only  child,  a 
daughter,  is  born,  and  soon  afterward  Byron  urges  his  wife  to 
go  with  the  child  to  the  home  of  her  father  till  some  arrange- 
ment can  be  made  with  his  creditors;  as  she  now  believes 
Byron  insane,  Lady  Byron  leaves  London  for  her  father's 
home  January  15,  1816  ;  she  writes  Byron  affectionately,  but, 
as  the  physicians  can  find  no  proof  of  insanity,  she  decides 
upon  a  separation  ;  Byron  at  first  refuses  an  amicable  separa- 
tion, but  afterward  consents  rather  than  take  the  case  into 
the  courts ;  he  is  accused  "  of  every  monstrous  vice,"  and  is 
even  threatened  with  mob  violence,  although  Leigh  Hunt  and 
others  defend  his  character;  in  March,  1816,  he  writes 
"A  Sketch"  —  a  scathing  attack  on  Mrs.  Clemont,  Lady 


BYROtf  379 

Byron's  maid,  who  is  supposed  to  have  been  concerned  in 
certain  revelations  of  Byron's  wickedness  to  his  wife — and  dur- 
ing the  same  month  the  lines  to  his  wife  beginning  "  Fare  thee 
well,"  in  which  he  expostulates  with  her  for  inflicting  a  " cure- 
less wound ; "  he  declares  to  Moore  that  no  blame  attaches  to 
Lady  Byron;  in  1816  he  made  overtures  for  a  reconciliation 
with  his  wife  but  was  refused,  and  wrote  "  A  Dream"  and  a 
novel  called  "  Marriage  of  Belphegor,"  narrating  his  own 
story,  which  he  destroyed  on  hearing  of  Lady  Byron's  illness, 
although  a  remnant  is  given  in  the  notes  of  "  Don  Juan." 

He  sails  for  Ostend,  April  24,  1816,  and  travels  in  luxurious 
style  with  Dr.  Polidori,  a  young  Swiss,  as  a  companion,  and 
two  servants ;  he  soon  changes  his  resolution  as  to  pay  for 
literary  work,  and  drives  sharp  bargains  with  Murray ;  he  re- 
ceives 2,000  guineas  for  the  fourth  canto  of  "  Childe  Harold," 
and  by  the  end  of  1821  has  received  from  Murray  ,£15,455 
for  his  copyrights  and  manuscripts;  in  November,  1817,  he 
finally  sells  Newstead  for  90,000  guineas;  the  payment  of  the 
debts  and  mortgages  leaves  him  an  income  of  the  interest  on 
^"60,000  during  his  life ;  he  grows  more  prudent  and  "  affects 
avarice  as  a  good  old  gentlemanly  vice  ;  "  he  visits  Brussells 
and  Waterloo,  and  goes  thence  by  the  Rhine  to  Geneva, 
where  he  takes  the  Villa  Diodati  on  the  south  side  of  the  lake; 
here  he  meets  the  Shelleys  and  Miss  Clairmont,  who  had  come 
from  England  expressly  to  meet  him,  and  the  life  of  the  party 
gives  rise  to  much  scandal ;  during  the  summer  Byron  and 
Shelley  make  a  tour  of  the  lake,  are  nearly  lost  in  a  storm, 
and  while  spending  two  rainy  days  at  Ouchy  Byron  writes  the 
"Prisoner  of  Chillon;  "  about  the  same  time  he  completes  the 
third  canto  of  "  Childe  Harold,"  in  which  he  shows  the  effect 
of  being  "dosed  to  nausea  with  Wordsworth"  by  Shelley; 
in  the  following  September  Byron  makes  a  tour  of  the  Bernese 
Oberland  with  Hobhouse,  his  life-long  friend,  and  takes  notes 
on  the  scenery;  while  at  the  Villa  Diodati  he  writes  also  "  To 
Augusta,"  the  verses  addressed  "To  my  sweet  Sister"  (sup- 


380  BYRON 

pressed  at  her  request  till  after  his  death),  the  monody  on  the 
death  of  Sheridan,  and  the  fragment  called  "  Darkness;  "  in 
January,  1817,  a  daughter  by  Byron  is  born  to  Miss  Clair- 
mont,  and  is  sent  to  him  at  Venice  with  a  Swiss  nurse ;  he 
refuses  the  offer  of  a  lady  to  adopt  the  child,  places  her  in  a 
convent  near  Ravenna,  where  he  pays  double  fees  to  insure 
her  good  treatment,  and  leaves  her  ^5,000  as  a  marriage- 
portion ;  the  child  died  in  April,  1822,  and  was  profoundly 
mourned  by  Byron,  although  he  was  indifferent  and  even  hostile 
to  her  mother;  in  October  Byron  and  Hobhouse  cross  the 
Simplon  to  Milan  and  proceed  thence  to  Venice,  where  Byron 
resides  for  the  next  three  years,  taking  a  house  at  La  Mira  on 
the  Brenta;  in  the  spring  of  1817  he  visits  Rome,  and  sends 
thence  to  Murray,  in  May,  a  new  third  act  of  "Manfred,"  as 
he  had  heard  that  the  original  was  unsatisfactory  ;  as  his 
"mind  wants  something  craggy  to  break  upon,"  he  begins  to 
study  Armenian  at  the  Venetian  Monastery  ;  later  he  takes  the 
Palazzo  Mocenigo  on  the  Grand  Canal,  N  here  he  plunges  into 
"  degrading  excesses  which  injured  his  constitution  and  after- 
ward produced  bitter  self-reproach;"  here  he  writes  the 
fourth  canto  of  "  Childe  Harold,"  "Beppo"  (published  by 
Murray  in  May,  1819),  and  "Don  Juan;  "  the  first  five 
cantos  of  "Don  Juan"  are  published  without  the  name  of 
either  author  or  publisher,  and  Byron  is  somewhat  discon- 
certed at  the  outcry  against  it;  in  1819  he  "  falls  in  love  " 
with  the  Countess  Guiccioli,  an  Italian  beauty  of  sixteen,  re- 
cently married  to  a  man  of  sixty;  he  visits  her  at  Ravenna, 
with  the  consent  of  her  husband,  studies  medicine  in  order  to 
aid  her  in  recovering  her  health,  and  follows  her  to  Bologna ; 
in  the  absence  of  the  Count,  Byron  travels  with  the  Countess 
to  Venice  by  way  of  the  Euganean  hills,  and  then  establishes 
her  at  his  house  at  La  Mira ;  Venetian  society  is  shocked,  and 
"  English  tourists  stared  at  Byron  like  a  wild  beast ;  "  at  Ra- 
venna Byron  had  written  "  River  That  Rollest  by  the  Ancient 
Walls,"  and  from  Bologna  he  had  sent  to  Murray  his  "  Letter 


BYRON  381 

to  My  Grandmother's  Review ;  "  Count  Guiccioli  asks  Byron 
for  a  "loan  "  of  ^£1,000,  and  Moore  advises  Byron  to  give 
the  money  and  return  the  Countess,  but  Byron  insists  that  he 
will  "save  both  the  lady  and  the  money;  "  in  October,  1819, 
the  Countess  returns  to  her  husband,  and  Byron  talks  of  visit- 
ing England  and  dreams  of  settling  in  Venezuela  in  Bolivar's 
new  republic ;  after  all  the  preparations  are  made  for  the  trip 
to  England,  he  suddenly  changes  his  plans,  accepts  the  invita- 
tion of  the  Countess  to  visit  her,  and  is  back  in  Ravenna  at 
Christmas  time,  1819  ;  his  daily  routine  at  this  time  and  dur- 
ing his  later  life  was  as  follows  :  "  He  rose  very  late,  took  a 
cup  of  green  tea,  had  a  biscuit  and  soda-water  at  two,  rode 
out  and  practised  shooting,  dined  most  abstemiously,  visited 
in  the  evening,  and  returned  to  read  or  write  till  two  or  three 
in  the  morning;  "  in  disgust  at  the  reception  given  to  "  Don 
Juan,"  he  discontinues  it  after  the  fifth  canto  ;  in  February, 
1820,  he  translates  "  Morgante  Maggwre  "  and  in  March  the 
Francesca  da  Rimini  episode;  he  begins  his  first  drama, 
"  Marino  Faliero"  April  4th,  and  finishes  it  July  i6th  ;  it  is 
produced  in  London  during  the  following  spring,  and  fails, 
much  to  Byron's  annoyance;  early  in  1821  he  begins  his 
"  Sardanapalus, "  and  finishes  it  May  1 3th,  writing  the  last  three 
acts  in  a  fortnight ;  he  writes  "  The  Two  Foscari  "  within  a 
month  and  "Cain"  in  less  than  two  months;  during  this 
same  year,  1821,  he  also  writes  "The  Deformed  Trans- 
formed," and  begins  his  dramatization,  "  Werner;  "  early  in 
1821  he  writes  his  vigorous  letters  on  the  Pope  controversy; 
his  dramas,  written  at  this  period,  are  "often  mere  prose 
broken  into  apparent  verse;  "  "no  literary  hack  could  have 
written  more  rapidly,  and  some  could  have  written  as  well." 
In  July,  1821,  the  Countess  Guiccioli  is  divorced  from  her 
husband  by  a  Papal  decree  and  retires  to  a  villa,  where  Byron 
visits  her  frequently,  passing  the  intervals  in  "perfect 
solitude;"  Byron  now  becomes  connected  with  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  in  Italy,  contributes  funds,  and  is  made 


BYRON 

head  of  the  Americani,  a  section  of  the  Carbonari  or  revo- 
lutionary party ;  when  the  scheme  is  destroyed  by  the  Aus- 
trian troops,  Byron's  associates  are  banished,  and  strong 
pressure  is  placed  upon  him  to  induce  him  to  leave  Italy ;  at 
this  time  he  has  an  income  of  ^4,000  a  year,  and  devotes 
;£  1,000  to  charity;  he  calls  Shelley  from  Pisa  to  advise  him, 
and  finally  leaves  Venice  for  Pisa  in  October,  1821,  " preceded 
by  his  family  of  monkeys,  dogs,  cats,  and  pea-hens;  "  on  the 
way  he  meets  Rogers  at  Bologna  ;  he  settles  at  the  Casa  Lan- 
franchi  in  Pisa,  and  the  relatives  of  the  Countess  Guiccioli 
occupy  a  part  of  the  same  palace ;  at  Pisa  he  is  socially  inti- 
mate with  Trelawney  and  Shelley  ;  he  continues  "  Don  Juan," 
by  permission  of  the  Countess,  and  has  finished  cantos  six, 
seven,  and  eight  by  August,  1822;  meantime  "Cain"  had 
been  received  with  hostility,  and  Murray  had  grown  cautious 
about  publishing  more  of  Byron's  works ;  Byron  and  Shelley 
now  propose  to  found  a  revolutionary  paper  with  Leigh  Hunt 
for  editor,  and  they  import  that  unfortunate  genius  from  Lon- 
don with  his  wife  and  six  children ;  the  Hunt  family  take  up 
their  residence  in  Byron's  palace  ;  the  paper,  called  The  Lib- 
eral, survives  through  only  four  numbers,  and  contains  By- 
ron's "Vision  of  Judgment,"  his  "Letter  to  My  Grand- 
mother's Review,"  his  "  Heaven  and  Earth,"  his  "Blues," 
his  "  Morgante  Maggiore,"  and  a  few  epigrams  ;  in  the  pub- 
lication of  the  "Vision  of  Judgment"  culminated  a  long 
and  savage  quarrel  between  Byron  and  Southey,  during  which 
Byron  had  challenged  Southey,  though  the  challenge  had  been 
suppressed  by  Byron's  friend  Kinnaird  ;  during  the  summer 
of  1822  Byron  is  forced  to  leave  Pisa  by  a  stabbing  affray 
between  his  servants  and  the  soldiery,  and  he  spends  several 
months  with  the  Countess  Guiccioli  near  Leghorn  ;  during 
the  summer  occurred  the  drowning  of  Shelley  and  the  famous 
cremation  of  his  body  by  Byron,  Trelawney,  and  others. 

From  Pisa,  late  in  the  summer  of  1822,  Byron  removes  his 
household  to  Genoa,  where  he  settles  in  the  Casa  Salucci  at 


BYRON  383 

Albaro  ;  during  the  summer  he  had  swum  with  Trelavvney  out 
to  his  schooner,  three  miles  and  back ;  at  Genoa  he  meets 
Lady  Blessington,  who  has  since  recorded  her  conversations 
with  him  ;  he  grows  more  restless,  declares  that  he  does  not 
think  literature  his  vocation,  and  says  that  if  he  lives  ten  years 
longer  he  will  do  something ;  when  the  Greek  committee  is 
formed  in  London,  in  the  spring  of  1823,  Byron,  at  Trelaw- 
ney's  suggestion,  is  made  a  member;  on  July  i5th  he  sails 
from  Genoa  for  the  Levant  with  Trelawney  and  several  ser- 
vants in  a  "  collier-built  tub,"  which  he  had  bought  and  fitted 
out ;  he  takes  10,000  crowns  of  specie  and  40,000  in  bills  ;  on 
the  way  they  touch  at  Leghorn,  where  Byron  secures  a  copy  of 
verses  from  Goethe  ;  they  reach  Cephalonia  August  2d,  and 
Byron  remains  there  at  a  village  called  Metaxata  till  December 
27th,  while  Trelawney  and  the  rest  go  forward;  he  sails  for 
Missolonghi  December  28th,  and  reaches  there  after  narrow 
escapes  from  shipwreck  and  capture  by  the  Turks  ;  he  raises 
funds  for  the  Greeks  on  his  own  credit,  and  in  January  is 
made  commander-in-chief  of  the  Greek  troops ;  while  severely 
ill  in  January,  he  courageously  awes  a  crowd  of  mutineers,  who 
had  broken  into  his  room  ;  in  the  spring  of  1824,  while  still 
at  Missolonghi,  Byron  declines  an  appointment  as  "  governor- 
general  of  Greece  ;"  he  continues  to  starve  himself  to  prevent 
obesity,  but  his  health  is  seriously  undermined  by  the  mala- 
rial conditions  at  Missolonghi  ;  he  frees  certain  Turkish 
prisoners  at  Missolonghi,  and  adopts  a  child  found  among 
them ;  he  dies  of  fever  and  bad  medical  treatment  at  Misso- 
longhi, April  19,  1824  ;  his  body  was  buried  at  Hucknall 
Forkard,  England. 


384  BYRON 


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Quarterly  Review,  16  :  172-178  (Sir  Walter  Scott). 
25 


386  BYRON 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Intensity — Passion. — "J3is  passion  is  perfect — a 
fierce  and  blind  .desire,  w  hi  ch  jsxalts-  and  .impels  hisu-verse  into 
the  high  plane  of  emotion  and  expression.  He  feeds  upon 
nature  with  a  holy  hunger,  follows  her  with  a  divine  lust,  as 
of  gods  chasing  the  daughters  of  men.  Wind  and  fire,  the 
cadences  of  thunder  and  the  clamors  of  the  sea,  gave  to  him 
no  less  a  sensual  pleasure  than  a  spiritual  sustenance.  "- 
A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  The  tremendous  depth  and  intensity  of  passion,  which 
Byron  was  capable  of  representing  with  such  marvellous  skill 
of  expression,  is  powerfully  displayed  in  his  misanthropical 
creations,  and  tends  to  give  them  much  of  the  sorcery  they 
exercise  on  the  feelings.  .  .  .  He  is  eminently  a  poet  of 
passion.  In  almost  all  the  changes  of  his  mood  the  same 
energy  of  feeling  glows  in  his  verse.  The  thought  or  emotion 
uppermost  in  his  mind  at  anytime,  whether  it  be  bad  or  good, 
seems  to  sway,  for  the  moment,  all  the  faculties  of  his  nature. 
/He  has  a  passionate  love  for  evil,  a  passionate  love  for  nature, 
for  goodness,  for  beauty,  and  we  may  add,  a  passionate  love 
for  himself."—^.  P.  Whipple. 

"  In  his  nervous  and  manly  lines  we  find  no  amplification 
of  common  sentiments — no  ostentatious  polishing  of  pretty 
expressions.  On  the  contrary,  we  have  a  perpetual  stream  of 
thick^coming  fancies — an  eternal  spring  of  fresh-blown  images, 
which  seem  called  into  existence  by  the  sudden  flash  of  those 
glowing  thoughts  and  overwhelming  emotions  that  struggle  for 
expression  through  the  whole  flow  of  his  poetry,  and  impart 
a  diction  that  is  often  absurd  and  irregular,  a  force  and  charm 
which  frequently  realize  all  that  is  said  of  inspiration."- 
Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  There  was  the  heart,  ardent  at  the  call  of  freedom  or  of 
generous  feeling,  and  belying  every  moment  the  frozen  shrine 
in  which  false  philosophy  had  incarved  it,  glowing  like  the 


BYRON  387 

intense  and  concentrated  alcohol,  which  remains  one  single 
but  burning  drop  in  the  centre  of  the  ice  which  its  more 
watery  particles  have  formed." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  If  ever  there  was  a  violent  and  madly  sensitive  soul, 
it  was  Byron's.  This  promptitude  to  extreme  emo- 
tions was  with  him  a  family  legacy  and  the  result  of  educa- 
tion. .  .  .  When  he  went  to  school  his  friendships  were 
passions.  .  .  .  Small  or  great,  the  passion  of  the  hour 
swept  down  upon  his  mind  like  a  tempest,  roused  him,  trans- 
ported him  into  either  imprudence  or  genius.  .  .  .  All 
styles  appear  dull  and  all  souls  sluggish  beside  his.  .  .  . 
There  were  internal  tempests  within  him,  avalanches  of  ideas, 
which  found  issue  only  in  writing." — Tame. 

"Jlis  passionate  nature  could  alone,  prfl^nrp  snrh  a  g^ragm 
as  *  Don  Juan.*  •  •  •  The  vigorous  reality  which  breaks 
forth  in  Byron's  verses  reproduces  all  the  being  of  the  poet  in 
each  one  of  those  cadences  which  exhibit  the  beatings  of  his 
heart.  .  .  .  His  poetry  is  always  illuminated  by  a  ray  of 
lightning." — Emilio  Castelar. 

"  Byron  was  too  violent,  and  for  that  reason  not  true  enough 
to  answer  the  lasting  needs  of  the  soul." — Edmond Scherer. 

"  Byron's  mind  was  the  battle  field  of  contending  im- 
pulses. .  .  .  The  intensity  of  his  feelings  imparts  to  his 
style  a  splendor  and  passion  that  raises  it  [«  Childe  Harold  '] 
far  above  the  diction  of  his  earlier  poems.  .  .  .  Looking 
at  his  poetry  from  a  purely  lyrical  standpoint,  it  is  surely  im- 
possible for  any  man  not  to  be  carried  away  on  the  tide  of  its 
power  and  passion." — W.  H.  Courthope. 

"It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  Lord  Byron  could  ex- 
hibit only  one  man  and  one  woman — a  man  proud,  moody, 
cynical,  with  defiance  on  his  brow  and  misery  in  his  heart,  a 
scorner  of  his  kind,  implacable  in  revenge,  yet  capable  of  deep 
and  strong  affection  ;  a  woman  all  softness  and  gentleness, 
loving  to  caress  and  be  caressed,  but  capable  of  being  trans- 
formed by  passion  into  a  tigress." — Macaulay. 


388  BYRON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  am  too  well  avenged  !  but  'twas  my  right  ; 
Whate'er  my  sins  might  be,  thou  wert  not  sent 
To  be  the  Nemesis  who  should  requite — 
Nor  did  Heaven  choose  so  near  an  instrument. 
Mercy  is  for  the  merciful ! — if  thou 
Hast  been  of  such,  'twill  be  accorded  now. 
Thy  nights  are  banished  from  the  realms  of  sleep  !— 
Yes !  they  may  flatter  thee,  but  thou  shalt  feel 
A  hollow  agony  which  will  not  heal, 
For  thou  art  pillowed  on  a  curse  too  deep  ; 
Thou  hast  sown  in  my  sorrow,  and  must  reap 
The  bitter  harvest  of  a  woe  as  real ! " — To  Lady  Byron. 

"  The  cold  in  clime  are  cold  in  blood,       • 
Their  love  can  scarce  deserve  the  name  ; 
But  mine  was  like  the  lava  flood 
That  boils  in  Aetna's  breast  of  flame. 

If  changing  cheek  and  scorching  vein, 

Lips  taught  to  writhe  but  not  complain, 

If  bursting  heart  and  madd'ning  brain 

And  daring  deed  and  vengeful  steel 

And  all  that  I  have  felt  and  feel 

Betoken  love — that  love  was  mine, 

And  shown  by  many  a  bitter  sign." — The  Giaour. 

"  Souls  who  dare  use  their  immortality — 

Souls  who  dare  look  the  Omnipotent  tyrant  in 

His  everlasting  face  and  tell  Him  that 

His  evil  is  not  good !     If  He  has  made, 

As  He  saith — which  I  know  not  nor  believe — 

But,  if  He  made  us — He  cannot  unmake  : 

We  are  immortal !     Nay,  He'd  have  us  so, 

That  He  may  torture  :  let  Him!     He  is  great — 

But,  in  His  greatness,  is  no  happier  than 

We  in  our  conflict !     Goodness  would  not  make 

Evil  :  and  what  else  hath  He  made  ?     But  let  Him 

Sit  on  His  vast  and  solitary  throne, 


BYRON  389 

Creating  worlds,  to  make  eternity 

Less  burdensome  to  His  immense  existence 

And  unparticipated  solitude  ; 

Let  Him  crowd  orb  on  orb  :  He  is  alone, 

Indefinite,  indissoluble  tyrant  ; 

Could  He  but  crush  Himself,  'twere  the  best  boon 

He  ever  granted  ;  but,  let  Him  reign  on, 

And  multiply  Himself  in  misery  !"  —  Cain. 


Misanthropy  —  Malignity.  —  "  He   was    completely 

master  of  the  whole  rhetoric  of  despair  and  desperation.  .  .  . 
Overfall  these  works,  amid  the  most  brilliant  shows  of  wit 
and  imagination,  are  thrown  the  sable  hues  of  misanthropy 
and  despair.  They  are  all  held  in  the  bondage  of  one  frown- 
ing and  bitter  feeling.  .  .  .  They  all  display  the  gulf  of 
darkness  and  despair  into  which  great  genius  is  hurried  when 
it  is  delivered  over  to  bad  passions.  .  .  .  His  misan- 
thropy, real  or  affected,  sometimes  induced  him  fr>  give 
prominence  to  qualities  essentially  unpoetical.  The  frequent 
pervasion  of  his  powers  and  the  unhealthy  moral  atmosphere 
which  surrounds  some  of  his  splendid  expressions  have  given 
rise  to  a  sarcastic  epigram,  which  declares  that  his  ethical 
system  is  compounded  of  misanthropy  and  licentiousness,  the 
first  command  of  which  is,  '  Hate  your  neighbor,  and  love 
your  neighbor's  wife.'  "  —  E,  P.  Whipple. 

11  Never  had  any  writer  so  vast  a  command  of  the  whole 
eloquence  of  scorn,  misanthropy,  and  despair.  That  Marah 
was  never  dry.  No  art  could  sweeten,  no  draughts  could  ex- 
haust its  perennial  waters  of  bitterness.  .  .  .  Year  after 
year  and  month  after  month  he  continued  to  repeat  that  to 
be  wretched  was  the  destiny  of  all  ;  that  to  be  eminently 
wretched  is  the  destiny  of  the  eminent  ;  that  all  the  desires 
by  which  we  are  cursed  lead  alike  to  misery  —  if  they  are  not 
gratified,  to  the  misery  of  disappointment  ;  if  they  are  grati- 
fied, to  the  misery  o^jatiety.  His  heroes  are  men  who  have 
arrived  by  different  roads  at  the  same  goal  of  despair,  who 


390  BYRON 

are  sick  of  life,  who  are  at  war  with  society,  .  .  .  and 
who  to  the  last  defy  the  whole  power  of  earth  and  heaven. 
He  always  described  himself  as  a  man  of  the  same  kind  with 
his  favorite  creations;  as  a  man  whose  heart  had  been 
withered,  whose  capacity  for  happiness  was  gone  and  could 
not  be  restored,  but  whose  invincible  spirit  dared  the  worst 
that  could  befall  him  here  or  hereafter.  .  .  .  There  was 
created  in  the  minds  of  many  of  these  enthusiasts  a  perni- 
cious and  absurd  association  between  intellectual  power  and 
moral  depravity.  From  the  poetry  of  Lord  Byron  they  drew 
a  system  of  ethics,  compounded  of  misanthropy  and  voluptu- 
ousness, a  system  in  which  the  great  commandments  were,  to 
hate  your  neighbor  and  to  love  your  neighbor's  wife."— 
Macaulay. 

"  There  is  the  canker  of  misanthropy  at  the  core  of  all  he 
touches.  .  .  .  We  are  acquainted  with  no  writing  so  well 
calculated  to  extinguish  in  young  minds  all  generous  enthusi- 
asm and  gentle  affection — all  respect  for  themselves,  and  all 
love  for  their  kind — and  actually  to  persuade  them  that  it  is 
wise  and  manly  and  knowing  to  laugh  not  only  at  self-denial 
and  restraint  but  at  all  aspiring  ambition  and  all  warm  and 
constant  affection.  .  .  .  It  seems  to  be  Lord  Bvron's 
way  never  to  excite  a  kind  or  noble  sentiment  without  mak- 
ing haste  to  obliterate  it  by  a  torrent  of  unfeeling  mockery  or 
relentless  abuse  and  taking  pains  to  show  how  well  these  pass- 
ing fantasies  may  be  reconciled  to  a  system  of  resolute  misan- 
thropy. .  .  .  We  do  not  consider  it  unfair  to  say  that 
Lord  Byron  appears  to  us  to  be  the  zealous  apostle  of  a  cer- 
tain fierce  and  magnificent  misanthropy,  which  has  already 
saddened  his  poetry  with  too  deep  a  shade,  and  not  only  led 
to  a  great  misapplication  of  great  talents,  but  contributed  to 
render  popular  some  very  false  estimates  of  the  constituents 
of  human  happiness  and  merit." — Francis  Jeffrey. 

11  What  does  he  find  in  science  but  deficiencies,  and  in  re- 
ligion but  mummeries  ?  Does  he  so  much  as  preserve  poetry  ? 


BYRON  391 

Of  the  divine  mantle,  the  last  garment  which  a  poet  respects, 
he  makes  a  rag  to  stamp  upon,  to  wring,  to  make  holes  in, 
out  of  sheer  wantonness.  ...  A  darkness  which  seems 
eternal  fell  upon  his  soul,  so  that  at  times  he  saw  evil  in 
everything.  .  .  .  Byron,  being  unhappy,  distinguished 
himself  among  all  other  poets  as  Satan  is  distinguished  among 
all  angels." — Emilio  Castelar. 

"  Moody  and  misanthropical,  he  rejected  the  whole  manner 
of  thought  of  his  predecessors ;  and  the  scepticism  of  the 
eighteenth  century  suited  him  as  little  as  its  popular  be- 
lief. .  .  .  He  proclaimed  to  the  world  his  misery . and 
dgsgair. ' ' — Thomas  Arnold. 

"It  P  Don  Juan  '1  is  a  WOrk  f]\]\  flf  sniilf   hiftprljy  ^yfpf^  Tp 

its  misanthropy. ' ' — Goethe. 

^••^^^^^^^^^^••W 

"  In  '  Don  Juan  '  he  pours  forth  a  flood  of  cynical  con- 
tempt  on  the  high-strung  romantic  and  sentimental  fancies 
dear  to  that  popular  taste  which  he  had  himself  done  so 
much  to  encourage." — W.  H.  Courthope. 
^  "  Byron  wandered  through  the  world,  sad,  gloomy,  and  un- 
quiet ;  wounded  and  bearing  the  arrow  in  his  wound.  ..  .  . 
The  emptiness  of  the  life  and  death  of  solitary  individuality 
has  never  been  so  powerfully  and  efficaciously  summed  up  as 
in  the  pages  of  Byron." — Mazzini. 

"  He  veneered  the  true  and  noble  self  which  gave  life  to 
his  poetry  with  a  layer  of  imperfectly  comprehended  cynicism 
and  weak  misanthropy,  which  passed  with  him  for  worldly 
wisdom."—^/.  A.  Symonds. 

"  [In  speaking  of  '  Don  Juan  * j  These  are  the  words  ojLa. 
sceptic,  even  of  a  cynic — it  is  in  this  he  ends.  Sceptic  through 
misanthropy,  cynic  through  bravado,  a  sad  and  combative 
humor  always  impels  him.  .  .  .  You  see  clearly  that  he 

tvMMHHMMMMaMMi^H^MHMMMMB^^^* 

is  always  the  same,  in  excess  and  unhappy,  bent  on  destroy- 
ing himself." — Taine. 


392  BYRON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Oh  man  !  thou  feeble  tenant  of  an  hour, 
Debased  by  slavery,  or  corrupt  by  power, 
Who  knows  thee  well  must  quit  thee  with  disgust, 
Degraded  mass  of  animated  dust ! 
Thy  love  is  lust,  thy  friendship  all  a  cheat, 
Thy  smiles  hypocrisy,  thy  words  deceit ! 
By  nature  vile,  ennobled  but  by  name, 
Each  kindred  brute  might  bid  thee  blush  for  shame. 
Ye!  who  perchance  behold  this  simple  urn, 
Pass  on — it  honors  none  you  wish  to  mourn  : 
To  mark  a  friend's  remains  these  stones  arise ; 
I  never  knew  but  one,  and  here  he  lies." 

— Epitaph  on  a  Newfoundland  Dog. 

"  I  have  not  loved  the  world,  nor  the  world  me  : 
I  have  not  flattered  its  rank  breath,  nor  bowed 
To  its  idolatries  a  patient  knee — 
Nor  coined  my  cheek  to  smiles,  nor  cried  aloud 
In  worship  of  an  echo  ;  in  the  crowd 
They  could  not  deem  me  one  of  such  ;  I  stood 
Among  them  but  not  of  them  ;  in  a  shroud 
Of  thoughts  which  were  not  their  thoughts,  and  still  could, 
Had  I  not  filled  my  mind,  which  thus  itself  subdued." 

—  Childe  Harold. 

"  Dogs  or  men !— for  I  flatter  you  in  saying 
That  ye  are  dogs — your  betters  far — ye  may 
Read,  or  not  read,  what  I  am  now  essaying 
To  show  ye  what  ye  are  in  every  way ; 
As  little  as  the  moon  stops  for  the  baying 
Of  wolves,  wiH  the  bright  muse  withdraw  one  ray 
From  out  her  skies — there  howl  your  idle  wrath 
The  while  she  silvers  o'er  your  gloomy  path." 

— Don  Juan. 

3.   Egotism  —  Self- Revelation.  —  ".No  poet  ever 
stamped  upon  his  writings  a  deeper  impress  of  personality  or 


BYRON  393 

viewed  outward  objects  in  a  manner  more  peculiar  to  himself. 
Everything  about  him  was  intensely  subjective,  individual, 
Byronic.  .  .  .  Self  is  ever  uppermost  in  his  mind.  The 
whole  world  is  called  upon  to  listen  to  the  recital  of  the  joys 
and  the  agonies  of  George  Gordon,  Lord  Byron. 
He  tells  his  thousands  of  readers  that  they  are  formed  of  more 
vulgar  clay  than  himself,  that  he  despises  them  from  his  in- 
most heart,  that  their  life  is  passed  in  a  bustling  oscillation 
between  knavery  and  folly,  and  that  all  mankind  is  but  a 
degraded  mass  of  animated  dust.  ...  In  whatever  atti- 
tude he  places  himself,  he  evidently  intends  it  to  be  the  one 
which  shall  excite  admiration  or  honor.  ...  He  grad- 
ually came  to  consider  the  world  as  made  for  him  and  uncon- 
sciously to  subordinate  the  interests  and  happiness  of  others 
to  his  own.  .  .  .  We  think  that  this  egotism  or  selfish- 
ness in  Byron  was  the  parent  of  most  of  his  vices,  inasmuch 
as  it  emancipated  his  mind  from  the  burden  of  those  duties 
which  grow  out  of  a  man's  relations  with  society." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  He  was  himself  the  beginning,  the  middle,  and  the  end 
of  his  own  poetry,  the  hero  of  every  tale,  the  chief  object  in 
every  landscape.  .  .  .  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this 
remarkable  man  owed  the  vast  influence  which  he  exercised 
over  his  contemporaries  at  least  as  much  to  his  gloomy  ego- 
tism as  to  the  real  power  of  his  poetry." — Macaulay. 

"  Never,  in  the  first  flight  of  his  thoughts,  did  he  liberate 
himself  from  himself.  He  dreams  of  himself  and  sees  himself 
throughout.  .  .  .  He  meditated  too  much  upon  himself 
to  be  enamored  of  anything  else.  .  .  .  No  such  great 
poet  has  had  so  narrow  an  imagination  ;  he  would  not  meta- 
morphose himself  into  another.  They  are  his  own  sorrows, 
his  own  revolts,  rns  own  travels,  which  ...  he  intro- 
duces into  ms  verses."^^^^. 

"  '  Je  suis  en  moi  VinfimJ  exclaimed  Byron,  and  this  in- 
finity of  egotism  left  him  in  the  end,  like  Napoleon,  defeated 


394  BYRON 

and  defrauded,  narrowed  into  the  bounds  of  a  small  solitary 
and  sterile  island  in  the  great  ocean  of  human  existence — or 
would  have  left  him  so  had  not  Greece  summoned  him  and 
Missolonghi  set  him  free." — Edward Dowden. 

"  He  has  treated  hardly  any  subject  but  one — himself;  now 
the  man  in  Byron  is  a  nature  even  less  sincere  than  the  poet. 
This  beautiful  and  blighted  being  is  at  bottom  a  coxcomb. 
He  posed  all  his  life  long." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  In  Byron  the  Ego  is  revealed  in  all  its  pride  of  power, 
freedom,  and  desire,  in  the  uncontrolled  plenitude  of  all  its 
faculties.  The  world  around  him  neither  rules  nor  tempts 
him.  The  Byrpnian  Ego  aspires  to  rule  it.  ...  _J3vron 
stamps  every  object  he  portrays  with  his  own  individuality." 
— Mazzini. 

"  That  diversity  of  character  which  dramatists  represent 
through  fiction's  personages,  Byron  assumed  himself;  and  he 
was  either  the  villain,  the  enthusiast,  the  lover,  or  the  jester, 
according  as  the  wantonness  of  his  omnipotent  genius  sug- 
gested. ...  He  has  not  left  a  scrap  of  writing  upon 
which  he  did  not  stamp  an  image  of  himself." — Thomas 
Moore. 

"  Childe  Harold  may  not  be,  nor  do  we  believe  he  is, 
Lord  Byron's  very  self,  but  he  is  Lord  Byron's  picture  sketched 
by  Lord  Byron  himself." — Walter  Scott. 

"  He  hangs  the  cloud,  the  film  of  his  existence  over  all  out- 
ward things,  sits  in  the  centre  of  his  thoughts,  and  enjoys 
dark  night,  bright  day,  the  glitter  and  the  gloom,  '  in  cell 
monastic.'  ...  In  reading  Lord  Byron's  works,  he  him- 
self is  never  absent  from  one's  mind." — William  Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  now  was  Childe  Harold  sore  sick  at  heart, 
And  from  his  fellow-bacchanals  would  flee  ; 
'Tis  said  at  times  the  sullen  tear  would  start, 
But  pride  congealed  the  drop  within  his  ee  : 


BYRON  395 

Apart  he  talked  in  joyous  reverie, 
And  from  his  native  land  resolved  to  go 
And  visit  scorching  climes  beyond  the  sea  ; 
With  pleasure  drugg'd,  he  almost  longed  for  woe, 
And  e'en  for  change  of  scene  would  seek  the  shades  below." 

—Childe  Harold. 

11  Childe  Harold  had  a  mother — not  forgot, 
Though  parting  from  that  mother  he  did  shun  ; 
A  sister  whom  he  loved,  but  saw  her  not  • 
Before  his  weary  pilgrimage  begun  : 
If  friends  he  had,  he  bade  adieu  to  none. 
Yet  deem  not  thence  his  breast  a  breast  of  steel. 
Ye,  who  have  known  what  't  is  to  dote  upon 
A  few  dear  objects,  will  in  sadness  feel 
Such  partings  break  the  heart  they  fondly  hope  to  heal." 

—  Childe  Harold. 

"  God  help  us  all !     God  help  me  too  !     I  am, 
God  knows,  as  helpless  as  the  Devil  can  wish, 
And  not  a  whit  more  difficult  to  damn 
Than  is  to  bring  to  land  a  late-hooked  fish 
Or  to  the  butcher  to  purvey  the  lamb  ; 
Not  that  I'm  fit  for  such  a  noble  dish 
As  one  day  will  be  that  immortal  fry 
Of  almost  everybody  born  to  die." 

—  Vision  tf  Judgment. 

4.  Power  of  Invective. — "  He  laid  bare  the  cant  of 
English  society  and  the  corruption  of  the  aristocracy,  and 
lashed  them  with  a  whip  of  scorpions.  He  illustrated  and  de- 
nounced the  social  tyranny  by  which  thousands  were  driven 
into  crime  and  prevented  from  returning  to  virtue.  The  ar- 
rows of  his  scorn  fell  fast  and  thick  among  the  defenders  of 
political  abuses.  The  renegade,  the  hypocrite,  the  bigot, 
were  made  to  feel  the  full  force  of  his  merciless  invective. 
Wielding  an  uncontrolled  dominion  over  language,  and  pro- 
fusely gifted  with  all  the  weapons  of  sarcasm,  hatred,  and  con- 
tempt, he  battled  fiercely  in  the  service  of  freedom,  and  knew 


396  BYRON 

well  how  to  overwhelm  its  adversaries  with  denunciations  and 
stormy  threats,  with  ridicule  and  irony,  which  should  eat  into 
their  hearts  as  rust  into  iron." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  We  trace  an  element  of  indignation  in  nearly  all  his  sub- 
sequent poems,  which  break  too  frequently  into  invectives 
against  unworthy  or  mistaken  objects  of  his  spleen. 
If  Byron  desired  fame,  he  achieved  it  in  fair  and  full  measure 
in  his  satire.  .  .  .  Satire,  which  at  the  outset  of  Byron's 
career  crawled  like  a  serpent,  has  here  [in  '  PQn  Juan '"j  ac- 
quired  the  wings  and  mailed  panoply  of  a  dragon." — John 
Adding  ton  Symonds. 

11  All  the  Satanic  qualities  with  which  he  is  supposed  to 
have  been  endowed  were  called  out  of  the  depths  of  his  heart 
by  this  satire  ['  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers  'J — cyni- 
cism, irony,  sarcasm,  anger,  hatred,  and  the  thirst  for  ven- 
geance. The  immortal  cripple,  like  Vulcan  with  his  red-hot 
hammer,  ascended  the  English  Olympus  and  spared  none  of 
the  statues  of  the  gods." — Emilio  Castelar. 

"  How  many  well-regulated  minds  has  he  not  lashed  or 
laughed  into  rage  !  .  .  .  The  '  English  Bards  and  Scotch 
Reviewers  '  could  not  fail  to  make  a  stir,  consisting  as  it  did 
of  a  rolling  fire  of  abuse  against  nearly  all  the  most  conspicu- 
ous literary  men  of  his  time." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  May  the  strong  curse  of  crushed  affections  light 
Back  on  thy  bosom  with  reflected  blight ! 
And  make  thee  in  thy  leprosy  of  mind 
As  loathsome  to  thyself  as  to  mankind  ! 
Till  all  thy  self-thoughts  curdle  into  hate, 
Black — as  thy  will  for  others  would  create  : 
Till  thy  hard  heart  be  calcined  into  dust, 
And  thy  soul  welter  in  its  hideous  crust. 
Oh,  may  thy  grave  be  sleepless  as  the  bed — 
The  widowed  couch  of  fire,  that  thou  hast  spread ! 


BYRON  397 

Then,  when  thou  fain  would'st  weary  heaven  with  prayer, 
Look  on  thy  earthly  victims — and  despair  ! 
Down  to  the  dust !  and  as  thou  rott'st  away, 
Even  worms  shall  perish  on  thy  poisonous  clay." 

— A  Sketch. 

"  Oh  factious  viper  !  whose  envenomed  tooth 
Would  mangle  still  the  dead,  perverting  truth  ; 
What  though  our  '  nation's  foes '  lament  the  fate, 
With  generous  feeling,  of  the  good  and  great  : 
Shall  dastard  tongues  essay  to  blast  the  name 
Of  him  whose  meed  exists  in  endless  fame  ?  " 

— On  the  Death  of  Mr.  Fox. 

"  There  Clarke,  still  striving  piteously  *  to  please,' 
Forgetting  doggrel  leads  not  to  degrees, 
A  would-be  satirist,  a  hired  buffoon, 
A  monthly  scribbler  of  some  low  lampoon, 
Condemned  to  drudge,  the  meanest  of  the  mean, 
And  furbish  falsehoods  for  a  magazine, 
Devotes  to  scandal  his  congenial  mind  ; 
Himself  a  living  libel  on  mankind." 

— English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 


J;.  Harsh  Contrast  —  Abruptness.  —  "  Pictures  of 
uty  are  painted  with  hues  that  are  words,  and  speak  to  us 
of  heaven,  only  to  be  daubed  with  an  impatient  dash  of  the 
same  pencil  that  wrought  their  exceeding  loveliness  ;  majestic 
edifices  are  erected  only  to  be  overthrown  ;  statues  full  of  life 
and  feeling  are  created  only  to  be  dashed  petulantly  to  pieces. 
Indeed,  Byron  experienced  great  delight  in  producing  those 
brisk  shocks  of  surprise  which  come  from  yoking  together  the 
mean  and  the  exalted,  the  coarse  and  the  tender.  Some  of 
these  do  little  credit  to  his  heart,  and,  in  fact,  cast  ominous 
conjecture  on  the  truthfulness  of  his  feeling.  .  .  .  The 
gloom  of  his  meditation  is  laced  with  light  in  all  directions. 
Touches  of  pathos,  tributes  of  affection  .  .  .  gleams  of 


398  BYRON 

beauty — these  all  appear  in  company  with  a  cynicism  which 
sneers  at  the  object  to  which  they  appeal  or  a  despair  which 
doubts  their  existence." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  But  the  author  of  it  ['  Don  Juan  ']  has  the  unlucky  gift 
of  personating  all  those  lofty  and  sweet  allusions,  and  that  with 
such  grace  and  truth  to  nature  that  it  is  impossible  not  to  sup- 
pose, for  the  time,  that  he  is  among  the  most  devoted  of  their 
votaries — till  he  casts  off  the  character  with  a  jerk,  and  the 
moment  after  he  has  exalted  us  to  the  very  height  of  our  con- 
ception, resumes  his  mocking  at  all  things  serious  or  sublime, 
and  lets  us  down  at  once  on  some  coarse  joke,  hard-hearted 
sarcasm,  or  fierce  and  relentless  personality.  .  .  .  Thus, 
in  this  manner,  the  sublime  and  terrific  description  of  the 
Shipwreck  is  strangely  and  disgustingly  broken  by  traits  of  low 
humor  and  buffoonery.  .  .  .  Thus  all  good  feelings  are 
excited  only  to  accustom  us  to  their  speedy  and  complete  ex- 
termination."— Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  At  the  most  touching  moment  of  Haidee's  love,  he  vents 
a  buffoonery.  He  concludes  an  ode  with  caricatures.  He  is 
Faust  in  the  first  verse  and  Mephistopheles  in  the  second.  He 
employs  in  the  midst  of  tenderness  or  of  murder  penny-print 
witticisms,  trivialities,  gossip,  with  a  pamphleteer's  vilifica- 
tion and  a  buffoon's  whimsicalities.  He  lays  bare  poetic 
method,  asks  himself  where  he  has  got  to,  counts  the  stanzas 
already  done,  jokes  the  Muse,  Pegasus,  and  the  whole  epic 
stud  as  though  he  wouldn't  give  a  two-pence  for  them."- 
Taine. 

"  He  is  by  turns  a  cenobite  and  an  epicure,  chaste  and  vol- 
uptuous, sceptical  and  believing,  a  criminal  and  an  apostle,  an 
enemy  of  humanity  and  a  philanthropist,  an  angel  and  a  de- 
mon . ' '  — Emilio  Castelar. 

11  His  parody  on  the  speech  from  Medea  on  the  summit  of 
the  Cyneans  is  a  strong  proof  of  the  strange  mixture  of  the 
sublime  and  the  ridiculous  in  his  mind.  .  .  .  Vivacity, 
gloom,  tenderness,  sarcasm,  succeed  each  other  too  rapidly  for 


BYRON  399 

the  current  of  ordinary  feeling  to  follow  them.  We  wonder 
without  sympathizing ;  the  very  power  of  the  artist  leads  us 
to  doubt  the  sincerity  of  the  man." — Thomas  Moore. 

"  Its  [*  Don  Juan's']  power  is  owing  to  the  force  of  the  seri- 
ous writing  and  the  contrast  between  that  and  the  flashy  pas- 
sages with  which  it  is  interlarded.  From  the  sublime  to  the 
ridiculous  there  is  but  one  step.  ...  A  classical  intoxi- 
cation is  followed  by  the  splashing  of  soda-water,  by  frothy 
effusions  of  ordinary  bile." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  Ii^  him  the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous,  the  noble  and  the 
mean,  the  sarcastic  and  the  tender,  the  voluptuous  and  the 
beautifully  spiritual,  the  pious  and  the  impious  were  all  em- 
bodied. .  .  .  He  was  a  many-sided  monster  showing 
now  sublime  and  now  grotesque." — W.  M.  Howitt. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  thus  like  to  an  angel  o'er  the  dying 
Who  die  in  righteousness,  she  leaned  ;  and  there 
All  tranquilly  the  shipwrecked  boy  was  lying, 
As  o'er  him  lay  the  calm  and  stirless  air. 
But  Zoe  the  meantime  some  eggs  was  frying  ; 
Since,  after  all,  no  doubt  the  youthful  pair 
Must  breakfast,  and  betimes — lest  they  should  ask  it, 
She  drew  out  her  provision  from  the  basket." 

— Don  Juan. 

"  As  he  drew  near,  he  gazed  upon  the  gate 
Ne'er  to  be  entered  more  by  him  or  Sin, 
With  such  a  glance  of  supernatural  hate 
As  made  Saint  Peter  wish  himself  within  ; 
He  pattered  with  his  keys  at  a  great  rate, 
And  sweated  through  his  apostolic  skin  : 
Of  course,  his  perspiration  was  but  ichor, 
Or  some  such  other  spiritual  liquor." 

—  Vision  of  Judgment. 


400  BYRON 

"  He  felt  that  chilling  heaviness  of  heart, 
Or  rather  stomach,  which,  alas  !  attends, 
Beyond  the  best  apothecary's  art, 
The  loss  of  love,  the  treachery  of  friends, 
Or  death  for  those  we  dote  on,  when  a  part 
Of  us  dies  with  them  as  each  fond  hope  ends  ; 
No  doubt  he  would  have  been  much  more  pathetic 
But  the  sea  acted  as  a  strong  emetic." — Don  Juan. 

6y  Grandeur — Magnificence. — "  His  work,  beyond  all 
our  other  poets,  recalls  or  suggests  the  wide  and  high  things 
in  nature;  the  large  likeness  of  the  elements,  the  immeas- 
urable liberty  and  the  stormy  strength  of  the  waters  and 
winds.  .  .  .  To  him  the  large  motions  and  the  beauties 
of  space  were  tangible  and  familiar  as  flowers." — A.  C. 
Swinburne. 

11  The  fierce  and  far  delight  of  the  thunderstorm  is  here  [in 
'  Childe  Harold  ']  described  in  verse  almost  as  vivid  as  its 
lightnings.  The  live  thunder  leaping  among  the  rattling  crags 
— the  voice  of  mountains,  as  if  shouting  to  each  other — the 
plashing  of  the  big  rain — the  gleaming  of  the  wide  lake, 
lighted  like  phosphoric  sea — present  a  picture  ofsublime  terror, 
yet  of  enjoyment,  often  attempted  but  never  so  well,  certainly 
never  better,  brought  out  in  poetry.  ...  In  the  very 
grand  and  tremendous  drama  of  '  Cain/  Lord  Byron  has 
certainly  matched  Milton  on  his  own  ground." — Sir  Walter 
Scott. 

11  ['  Of  Childe  Harold  ']  Declamation  unfolds  itself,  pompous 
and  at  times  artificial,  but  potent  and  so  often  sublime  that  the 
rhetorical  dotings  which  he  yet  preserved  disappear  under  the 
afflux  of  splendor  with  which  it  is  loaded.  Wordsworth,  Wal- 
ter Scott,  by  the  side  of  this  prodigality  of  accumulated  splen- 
dors, seemed  poor  and  gloomy." — Taine. 

"  Never  did  the  eternal  spirit  of  the  chainless  mind  make 
a  brighter  apparition  amongst  us.  He  seems  at  times  a  trans- 
formation of  that  immortal  Prometheus,  of  whom  he  has  written 


BYRON  401 

so  nobly,  .  .  .  whose  grand  and  mysterious  form,  trans- 
figured by  time,  reappears  from  age  to  age  ...  to  wail 
forth  the  lament  of  genius,  tortured  by  the  presentiment  of 
things  it  will  not  see  realized  in  its  time." — Mazzini. 

"  His  enjoyment  of  nature  in  her  grander  aspects  and  the 
consolation  he  received  from  her  amid  the  solitudes  of  the  sea 
and  lake  and  mountain,  are  expressed  with  sublimity  in  the 
passages  upon  the  ocean  and  the  June  thunderstorm. ' ' — -John 
Addington  Symonds. 

"  The  sublime  disorder  of  Byron's  genius  is  like  the  grand 
confusion  of  nature.  .  .  .  We  must  ascend  to  Jeremiah 
to  meet  in  universal  literature  a  poet  who,  like  him,  could 
send  his  voice  from  the  tombs,  repeat  like  him  the  elegy  of 
rain.  He  raised  himself  at  one  flight  to  the  most  sublime  re- 
gions of  the  spirit,  in  which  all  appeared  to  him  expanded  and 
glor i  fied . ' '  — Emilio  Caste lar. 

"  His  soul  was  exalted  by  the  broad  and  mighty  aspects  of 
nature :  for  mosaic  he  was  unfitted :  a  mountain,  the  sea, 
a  thunder-storm,  a  glorious  woman,  such  imposing  objects 
aroused  his  noble  rage." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"Its  [Manfred's]  obscurity  is  a  Jgaft^ofjtsj^^dejir — and 
the  clar'lFhess~that  rests  upon  it  and  the  smoky  distance  in 
which  it  is  lost  are  all  devices  to  increase  its  majesty,  to 
stimulate  our  curiosity  and  impress  us  with  a  deeper  awe." 
— Francis  Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Most  glorious  orb  !  that  wert  a  worship  ere 
The  mystery  of  thy  making  was  revealed  ! 
Thou  earliest  minister  of  the  Almighty, 
Which  gladdened,  on  their  mountain  tops,  the  hearts 
Of  the  Chaldean  shepherds,  till  they  poured 
Themselves  in  orisons  !     Thou  material  God ! 
And  representative  of  the  Unknown — 
Who  chose  thee  for  His  shadow ! 
26 


402  BYRON 

Thou  chief  star  !  Centre  of  many  stars  !  which  mak'st  our  earth 

Endurable,  and  temperest  the  hues 

And  hearts  of  all  who  walk  within  thy  rays  ! 

Sire  of  the  seasons  !     Monarch  of  the  climes, 

And  those  who  dwell  in  them  !  for  near  or  far, 

Our  inborn  spirits  have  a  tint  of  thee 

Even  as  our  outward  aspects  ;  thou  dost  rise 

And  shine  and  set  in  glory.     Fare  the  well !  " — Manfred. 

"  Oh,  thou  beautiful 

And  unimaginable  ether  !  and 

Ye  multiplying  masses  of  increased 

And  still  increasing  lights !     What  are  ye  ?     What 

Is  this  blue  wilderness  of  interminable 

Air,  where  ye  roll  along  as  I  have  seen 

The  leaves  along  the  limpid  streams  of  Eden  ? 

Is  your  course  measured  for  ye  ?    Or  do  ye 

Sweep  on  in  your  unbounded  revelry 

Through  an  aerial  universe  of  endless 

Expansion — at  which  my  soul  aches  to  think — 

Intoxicated  with  Eternity?  " — Cain. 

"  Ye  wilds,  that  look  eternal ;  and  thou  cave, 
Which  seem'st  unfathomable  ;  and  ye  mountains, 
So  varied  and  so  terrible  in  beauty  ; 
Here,  in  your  rugged  majesty  of  rocks 
And  toppling  trees  that  twine  their  roots  with  stone 
In  perpendicular  places,  where  the  foot 
Of  man  would  tremble,  could  he  reach  them — yes, 
Ye  look  eternal !  " — Heaven  and  Earth. 


7-  Depravity  —  Profligacy. — "The  admirers  of  his 
poetry  appear  sensible  of  some  obligation  to  be  the  champions 
of  his  conduct,  while  those  who  have  diligently  gathered  to- 
gether the  details  of  an  accurate  knowledge  of  the  unseemli- 
ness of  his  conduct,  cannot  bear  to  think  that  from  this  bramble 
men  have  been  able  to  gather  figs." — John  Morley. 

"The  recklessness  with  which  he  indulged  in  libertinism 


BYRON  403 

was  equalled  only  by  the  coolness  with  which  he  referred  to  it. 
In  a  letter  to  Hodgson  in  1810,  he  makes  the  candid  confes- 
sion that  he  has  found  '  that  nothing  but  virtue  will  do  in  this 

d d  world.     I  am  tolerably  sick  of  vice,  which  I  have 

tried  in  all  its  disagreeable  varieties,  and  mean,  on  my  return, 
to  cut  all  my  dissolute  acquaintances  and  leave  off  wine  and 
carnal  company  and  betake  myself  to  politics  and  decorum.' 
On  his  return  to  England  he  changed  this  amiable  determina- 
tion, so  far  as  decorum  was  concerned,  though  he  paid  some 
little  attention  to  politics.  He  seemed  determined  to  drain 
the  wine  of  life  to  the  dregs  and  to  excel  in  all  the  pleasant 
methods  of  disposing  of  health,  peace,  and  happiness  which  a 
great  metropolis  affords.  ...  He  appeared  determined 
to  be  excelled  by  none  either  in  literature  or  licentiousness. 
.  .  .  He  labors  to  make  vice  splendid.  There  are  pas- 
sages in  his  works  which  are  not  merely  licentious  in  tendency 
but  openly  obscene.  .  .  .  Some  portions  of  his  works, 
for  ribaldry  and  impurity,  fairly  bear  off  the  palm  from  all 
other  dabblers  in  dirt  and  blasphemy.  A  person  unacquainted 
with  the  character  of  Byron  would  infer  from  these  bold  and 
bad  portions  of  his  poems  and  letters  that  his  soul  was  the  seat 
of  obdurate  malice.  They  seem  to  illustrate  what  Dr.  Johnson 
calls  '  the  frigid  villany  of  studious  lewdness,  the  calm  malig- 
nity of  labored  impurity.'  They  have  none  of  that  soft  and 
graceful  voluptuousness  with  which  poets  usually  gild  and  hu- 
manize sensuality,  and  of  which  Byron  himself  was,  when  he 
pleased,  so  consummate  a  master.  The  faults  of  his  life  blaze 
out  in  his  own  verse  and  glitter  on  almost  every  page  of  his 
correspondence.  .  .  .  He  gradually  lost  all  moral,  fear. 
Everything  sacred  in  life,  religion,  affection,  sentiment,  duty, 
virtue,  he  could  as  easily  consider  matter  for  mirth  as  for  seri- 
ous meditation.  .  .  .  His  genius  fed  on  poisons,  and 
they  became  nutriment  to  it.  ...  Byron  casts  the  dra- 
pery of  the  beautiful  over  things  intrinsically  mean  and  bad, 
and  renders  them  poetical  to  the  eye.  .  .  .  If  he  took 


404-  BYRON 

pleasure  in  idealizing  the  bad,  he  received  no  less  in  degrad- 
ing the  ideal."— E.  P.   Whipple. 

"  He  plunged  into  wild  and  desperate  excesses,  ennobled 
by  no  generous  and  tender  sentiment.     From  his  Venetian 
harem  he  sent  forth  volume  after  volume  full  of  eloquence, 
of  wit,  of  pathos,  of  ribaldry,    and   of  bitter  disdain. "- 
Macaulay. 

"  Byron's  cry  is,  'I  am  miserable  because  law  exists;  and  I 
have  broken  it,  broken  it  so  habitually  that  now  I  cannot 
help  breaking  it.  I  have  tried  to  eradicate  the  sense  of  it  by 
speculation,  by  action ;  but  I  cannot.'  The  tree  of  knowl- 
edge is  not  the  tree  of  life.  .  .  .  That  law  exists  let  it 
never  be  forgotten,  is  the  real  meaning  of  Byron,  down  in 
that  last  terrible  '  Don  Juan,'  in  which  he  sits  himself  down 
in  artificial  calm,  to  trace  the  gradual  rotting  and  degradation 
of  a  man  without  law,  the  slave  of  his  own  pleasures." — 
Charles  Kingsley. 

11  There  is  the  varnish  of  voluptuousness  on  the  surface  of  all 
he  touches.  He,  if  ever  man  was,  is  a  law  unto  himself — a 
chartered  libertine.  .  .  .  Their  [his  poems]  general  ten- 
dency we  believe  to  be  in  the  highest  degree  pernicious. 
We  think  there  are  indecencies  and  indelicacies, 
seductive  descriptions  and  profligate  representations,  which 
are  extremely  reprehensible.  .  .  .  Under  some  strange 
misapprehension  as  to  the  truth  and  the  duty  of  proclaiming 
it,  he  has  exerted  all  the  powers  of  his  powerful  mind  to  con- 
vince his  readers,  both  directly  and  indirectly,  that  all  enno- 
bling pursuits  and  disinterested  virtues  are  mere  deceits  or 
illusions — hollow  and  despicable  mockeries  for  the  most  part, 
and,  at  best,  but  laborious  follies.  Religion,  love,  patriotism, 
valor,  devotion,  constancy — all  are  to  be  laughed  at,  disbe- 
lieved in,  and  despised  ! — and  nothing  is  really  good,  so  far 
as  we  can  gather,  but  a  succession  of  dangers  to  stir  the  blood 
and  of  banquets  and  intrigues  to  sooth  it  again  !  .  .  . 
The  charge  we  bring  against  Lord  Byron,  in  short,  is,  that 


BRYON  405 

his  writings  have  a  tendency  to  destroy  all  belief  in  the  reality 
of  virtue — and  to  make  all  enthusiasm  and  constancy  of  affec- 
tion ridiculous,  and  this  by  the  constant  exhibition  of  the 
most  profligate  heartlessness  in  the  persons  who  had  been 
transiently  represented  by  the  purest  and  most  exalted  emo- 
tion."— Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  Southey,  the  poet  laureate,  said  of  him  that  he  savored 
of  Moloch  and  Belial — most  of  all  Satan.  .  .  .  Several 
times  in  Italy  Lord  Byron  saw  gentlemen  leave  a  drawing- 
room  with  their  wives  when  he  was  announced.  ...  It 
is  here  [in  *  Don  Juan  ']  the  diabolical  poet  digs  in  his  sharpest 
claw,  and  he  takes  care  to  dig  it  into  your  weakest  side. 
.  .  .  You  see  clearly  that  he  is  always  the  same,  in  excess 
and  unhappy,  bent  on  destroying  himself,  His  *  Don  Juan  ' 
is  also  a  debauchery  ;  in  it  he  diverts  himself  outrageously  at 
the  expense  of  all  respectable  things,  as  a  bull  in  a  china-shop. 
He  is  often  violent  and  often  ferocious ;  black  imagination 
brings  into  his  stories  horrors  leisurely  enjoyed.  .  .  .  Too 
vigorous  and  hence  unbridled — that  is  the  word  which  ever 
recurs  when  we  speak  of  Byron.  .  .  .  When  a  man  jests 
amidst  his  tears  it  is  because  he  has  a  personal  imagination." 
— Taine. 

"  Whenever  he  wrote  a  bad  poem  he  supported  his  fame 
by  a  signal  act  of  profligacy ;  an  elegy  by  a  seduction,  a 
heroic  by  an  adultery,  a  tragedy,  by  a  divorce." — Walter 
Lander. 

"  Byron's  nature  was  in  substance  not  that  of  the  eu^vrfc  at 
all  but  rather  of  the  barbarian." — Thomas  Arnold. 

' '  He  cannot  be  called  a  moral  poet.  His  collected  works 
are  not  of  a  kind  to  be  recommended  for  family  reading ;  and 
the  poems  in  which  his  genius  shines  most  clearly  are  precisely 
those  which  lie  open  to  the  charge  of  licentiousness." — John 
Aldington  Symonds. 

"  '  Childe  Harold1  is,  I  think,  a  very  clever  poem,  but 
gives  no  true  symptoms  of  the  writer's  heart  or  morals. 


4O6  BYRON 

.  .  .  Vice  ought  to  be  a  little  more  modest,  and  it  must 
require  impudence  almost  equal  to  the  noble  lord's  other 
powers  to  claim  sympathy  gravely  for  the  ennui  arising  from 
his  being  tired  of  his  assailers  and  his  paramours." — Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Fill  the  goblet  again  !  for  I  never  before 

Felt  the  glow  which  now  gladdens  my  heart  to  its  core  ; 

Let  us  drink !     Who  would  not  ?  since,  through  life's  varied 

round, 

In  the  goblet  alone  no  deception  is  found. 
I  have  tried,  in  its  turn,  all  that  life  can  supply  ; 
I  have  basked  in  the  beam  of  a  dark  rolling  eye  ; 
I  have  lov'd  !— who  has  not  ?  but  what  heart  can  declare 
That  pleasure  existed  while  passion  was  there  ? 

Long  life  to  the  grape !  for  when  summer  is  flown, 
The  age  of  our  nectar  shall  gladden  our  own  ; 
We  must  die — who  shall  not  ?     May  our  sins  be  forgiven. 
And  Hebe  shall  never  be  idle  in  Heaven." 

— Fill  the  Goblet  Again. 

11  Thus  in  the  East  they  are  extremely  strict, 
And  wedlock  and  a  padlock  mean  the  same  ; 
Excepting  only  when  the  former's  picked 
It  ne'er  can  be  replaced  in  proper  frame  ; 
Spoilt,  as  a  pipe  of  claret  is  when  pricked  : 
But  then  their  own  polygamy's  to  blame  ; 
Why  don't  they  knead  two  virtuous  souls  for  life 
Into  that  moral  centaur,  man  and  wife  ?  " 

— Don  Juan. 

"  Leads  forth  the  ready  dame,  whose  rising  flush 
Might  once  have  been  mistaken  for  a  blush. 
From  where  the  garb  just  leaves  the  bosom  free, 
That  spot  where  hearts  were  once  supposed  to  be  ; 


BYRON  407 

Round  all  the  confines  of  the  yielded  waist 

The  strangest  hand  may  wander  undisplaced  ; 

The  lady's  in  return  may  grasp  as  much 

As  princely  paunches  offer  to  her  touch. 

Pleased,  round  the  chalky  floor  how  well  they  trip, 

One  hand  reposing  on  the  royal  hip  ; 

The  other  to  the  shoulder  no  less  royal 

Ascending  with  affection  truly  loyal !  " — The  Waltz. 


Thoughtful  Beauty.  — "  He  never  lost  a  keen  per- 
"ception  of  the  pure  and  beautiful.  .  .  .  The  passages  of 
thoughtful  beauty  which  are  scattered  over  his  stormy  and  im- 
pulsive poems — following,  as  they  so  often  do,  fierce  bursts  of 
passion  and  the  bad  idolatry  of  hatred  and  despair — are  as 
pleasing  to  the  eye  as  starlight  after  lightning.  In  the  third 
and  fourth  cantos  of  *  Childe  Harold,'  in  '  Don  Juan,'  in  the 
narratives  and  meditations  which  he  has  cast  in  a  dramatic 
form,  passages  might  be  selected  of  most  witching  liveliness, 
of  deep  pathos,  of  sad  and  mournful  beauty  of  sentiment,  of 
2tepi ration  after  truth  and  goodness — of  pity  and  charity  and 
faith  and  humanity  and  love." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Never  has  the  genius  of  man  inspired  pages  more  beauti- 
ful than  those  in  which  Lord  Byron  describes  his  travels  in 
Greece." — Emilio  C&stelar. 

"  His  poems  abound  with  sentiments  of  great  dignity 
and  tenderness  as  well  as  passages  of  infinite  sublimity  and 
beauty.' ' — Francis  Jeffrey. 

«  <  Childe  Harold  '  is  one  woven  mas*  ^»f  hpanty  and  in- 
tellectual gold  from  end  to  end,;" — W.  M.  Howitt. 

"  The  beauty  of  '  Cain  '  is  such  as  we  shall  not  see  a  sec- 
ond time  in  the  world." — Goethe. 

"  Along  with  his  astounding  power  and  passion  he  had  a 
strong  and  deep  sense  for  what  was  beautiful  in  nature  and  for 
what  was  beautiful  inhuman  action  and  suffering." — Matthew 
Arnold. 

"  There  was  a  strain  in  his  poetry  in  which  the  sense  pre- 


408  BYRON 

dominated  over  the  sound  ;  there  was  the  eye  keen  to  behold 
nature  and  the  pen  powerful  to  trace  her  varied  graces  of 
beauty  or  terror." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Ye  stars  !  which  are  the  poetry  of  heaven, 
If  in  your  bright  leaves  we  would  read  the  fate 
Of  men  and  empires — 'tis  to  be  forgiven, 
That  in  our  aspirations  to  be  great 
Our  destinies  o'erleap  their  mortal  state, 
And  claim  a  kindred  with  you  ;  for  ye  are 
A  beauty  and  a  mystery,  and  create 
In  us  such  love  and  reverence  from  afar 
That  fortune,  fame,  power,  life,  have  named 
Themselves  a  star." — Childe  Harold. 

"  Slow  sinks,  more  lovely  ere  his  race  be  run, 
Along  Morea's  hills  the  setting  sun  ; 
Not,  as  in  Northern  climes,  obscurely  bright, 
But  one  unclouded  blaze  of  living  light ! 
O'er  the  hushed  deep  the  yellow  beam  he  throws, 
Gilds  the  green  wave,  that  trembles  as  it  glows." 

—  The  Corsair- 

"  The  winds  were  pillowed  on  the  waves  ; 
The  banners  drooped  along  their  staves, 
And,  as  they  fell  around  them  furling, 
Above  them  shone  the  crescent  curling  ; 
And  that  deep  silence  was  unbroke, 
Save  where  the  watch  his  signal  spoke, 
Save  where  the  steed  neighed  oft  and  shrill, 
And  echo  answered  from  the  hill, 
And  the  wide  hum  of  that  wild  host 
Rustled  like  leaves  from  coast  to  coast, 
As  rose  the  Muezzin's  voice  in  air 
In  midnight  call  to  wonted  prayer." 

—  The  Siege  of  Corinth. 

9.  Lofty  Eloquence.— "  In   his    '  Childe   Harold 'Jig 
assumes  a  Infty  ?r^    phiTosopfrjY  tnn*-  and    '  reasnpy  hjgh  of 


BYRON  409 

Providence,  foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate.'  .  .  .  Lord 
Byron  has  strength  and  elevation  enough  to  filljip  the  .moulds 
of  our  classical  and  time-hallowed  recollections  and  to  re- 
kindle the  earliest  aspirations  of  the  mind  after  greatness  and 
true  glory  with  a  pen  of  fire." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  Filled  with  all  these  [Nature's]  images  of  nobility  and 
greatness,  he  gave  them  back  to  his  page  with  a  tone  so  philo- 
sophically profound,  with  a  music  so  thrilling,  with  a  dignity 
so  graceful  and  yet  so  tender,  that  nothing  in  poetry  can  be 
conceived  more  fascinating  and  perfect." — W.  M.  Hewitt. 

"  The  matter  with  which  he  deals  is  gigantic,  and  he  paints 
with  violent  colors  and  sweeping  pencil." — John  Morley. 

"  Feeling  the  un worthiness  of  his  subject,  he  dazzles  and 
blinds  the  eye  with  a  blaze  of  words." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Yet,  Italy  !  through  every  other  land 

Thy  wrongs  should  ring,  and  shall,  from  side  to  side  ; 
Mother  of  Arts  !  as  once  of  arms  ;  thy  hand 

Was  then  our  guardian,  and  is  still  our  guide  ; 
Parent  of  our  Religion  !  whom  the  wide 

Nations  have  knelt  to  for  the  keys  of  heaven  ! 
Europe,  repentant  of  her  parricide, 

Shall  yet  redeem  thee,  and,  all  backward  driven, 

Roll  the  barbarian  tide,  and  sue  to  be  forgiven." 

—  Childe  Harold. 

"  Spirit  of  freedom  !  when  on  Phyle's  brow 

Thou  sat'st  with  Thrasybulus  and  his  train, 
Could'st  thou  forebode  the  dismal  hour  which  now 

Dims  the  green  beauties  of  thine  Attic  plain  ? 
Not  thirty  tyrants  now  enforce  the  chain, 

But  every  carle  can  lord  it  o'er  thy  land  ; 
Nor  rise  thy  sons,  but  idly  rail  in  vain, 

Trembling  beneath  the  scourge  of  Turkish  hand, 

From  birth  till  death  enslaved  ;  in  word,  in  deed  unmann'd." 

—  Childe  Harold. 


4IO  BYRON 

"  Clime  of  the  unforgotten  brave  ! 
Whose  land,  from  plain  to  mountain  cave, 
Was  Freedom's  home  or  Glory's  grave  ! 
Shrine  of  the  mighty  !  can  it  be 
That  this  is  all  remains  of  thee  ? 
Approach,  thou  craven  crouching  slave  ; 
Say,  is  not  this  Thermopylae  ? 
Those  waters  blue  that  round  you  lave, 
Oh  servile  offspring  of  the  free — 
Pronounce  what  sea,  what  shore  is  this  ? 
The  gulf,  the  rock  of  Salamis  ! 
These  scenes,  their  story  not  unknown, 
Arise,  and  make  again  your  own." — The  Giaour. 


Coleridge,  1772-1834 

Biographical  Outline — Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  born 
October  21,  1772,  at  Ottery  St.  Mary;  father  vicar  of  the 
town  and  master  of  the  public  grammar  school,  a  man  of  un- 
usual learning ;  Coleridge  is  the  youngest  ef  ten  children ;  he 
is  remarkably  precocious  and  imaginative  as  a  child,  and  says 
of  himself  later,  "  I  never  thought  as  a  child  and  never  used 
the  language  of  a  child  ;  "  he  reads  the  "  Arabian  Nights  " 
before  he  is  five,  and,  on  the  death  of  his  father,  in  1781,  ob- 
tains, through  Sir  Francis  Buller,  a  presentation  to  Christ's 
Hospital,  a  school  that  he  enters  in  July,  1782  ;  here  he 
forms  an  intimate  friendship  wil.h  Charles  Lamb,  which  lasts 
during  Lamb's  lifetime  ;  afterward,  in  his  "  Essays  of  Elia," 
Lamb  writes  of  Coleridge  as  "the  inspired  charity  boy,"  who 
expounded  Plotinus,  recited  Homer  in  the  Greek,  and  read 
Virgil  for  pleasure ;  before  his  fifteenth  year  Coleridge  trans- 
lates eight  Greek  hymns  into  English  Anacreontics  ;  on  re- 
ceiving, by  accident,  a  subscription  to  a  loan  library,  he 
"  skulks  out  "  of  school  and  reads  "right  through  the  cata- 
logue; "  at  first  he  proposes  to  become  a  physician,  aids  his 
brother  in  hospital  operations,  and  memorizes  a  whole  Latin 
medical  dictionary ;  before  his  fifteenth  year  he  exchanges 
medicine  for  metaphysics;  Voltaire  "seduces  him  into  infi- 
delity, out  of  which  he  was  flogged  by  the  head-master  of 
Christ's  Hospital  " — a  chastisement  that  Coleridge  afterward 
called  "the  only  just  flogging  I  ever  received;"  he  is  re- 
called from  metaphysics  to  poetry  by  falling  in  love  with  the 
sister  of  a  school-mate  and  by  reading  the  sonnets  of  Bowles, 
which  he  repeatedly  transcribes  as  presents  to  his  friends ; 
while  at  Christ's  Hospital  he  impairs  his  health  by  imprudent 

411 


412  COLERIDGE 

exposure  and  improper  and  scanty  food,  but,  in  spite  of  spend- 
ing many  months  in  the  sick-ward,  he  rises  to  the  head  of  the 
school,  which  he  leaves  in  September,  1790. 

Having  been  appointed  to  an  exhibition  worth  ^40  a 
year  at  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  Coleridge  begins  residence 
there  as  a  sizar  in  October,  1791,  and  becomes  a  pensioner  in 
the  following  November ;  in  1792  he  wins  a  medal  offered  for 
the  best  Greek  ode ;  as  he  is  prevented  from  competing  for 
the  highest  honors  of  the  university  by  his  ignorance  of  math- 
ematics, his  reading  becomes  desultory,  and  he  grows  fond  of 
society,  in  which  he  shines  as  a  conversationalist ;  during 
1793  he  loses  the  favor  of  the  college  authorities  through  his 
liberal  political  views,  and  becomes  depressed  by  debt ;  late 
in  1793  he  runs  away  from  Cambridge  and  reaches  London, 
where  he  sells  a  poem  to  the  Morning  Chronicle  for  a  guinea ; 
soon  afterward  he  publishes  in  the  Chronicle  a  series  of  "  Son- 
nets on  Eminent  Characters;  "  then  he  enlists  in  the  dra- 
goons under  the  name  of  Comberback,  and  is  sent  to  Reading 
to  be  drilled  with  his  regiment ;  here  he  fails  as  a  horseman, 
but  wins  the  favor  of  his  comrades  by  writing  their  letters  and 
nursing  them  in  the  hospital ;  an  accident  leads  to  his  recog- 
nition and  discharge  from  the  army  in  April,  1794  ;  he  writes 
a  penitent  letter  to  his  brothers,  and  through  their  aid  he  re- 
turns, April  12,  1794,  to  Cambridge,  where  he  is  admonished 
in  the  presence  of  the  fellows;  in  June,  1794,  while  visiting 
a  friend  at  Oxford,  he  meets  Southey  ;  soon  afterward  he 
makes  a  pedestrian  tour  through  North  Wales,  where  he  meets 
his  sweetheart,  Mary  Evans,  at  Wrexham  ;  this  tour  is  after- 
ward described  by  Coleridge  and  his  companion  in  a  small 
volume  ;  returning  by  way  of  Bristol,  he  again  meets  Southey 
there,  and  on  short  acquaintance  he  becomes  engaged  to  Sara 
Fricker,  daughter  of  a  Bristol  tradesman,  to  whose  sister 
Southey  was  already  engaged  ;  while  at  Bristol  Coleridge  joins 
with  Southey  and  others  in  developing  a  socialistic  scheme 
called  by  them  "  Pantisocracy  ;  "  they  were  to  marry,  emi- 


)LERIDGE  413 

grate  to  the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna,  and  establish  there  a 
modern  Utopia  ;  about  this  time  Coleridge  collaborates  with 
Southey  in  writing  "The  Fall  of  Robespierre,"  which  was 
published  as  the  work  of  Coleridge  in  1794. 

Coleridge  leaves  Cambridge  without  a  degree  late  in  1794, 
and  first  visits  London,  where  he  renews  his  association  with 
Lamb  ;  Southey  recalls  him  to  his  fiancee  at  Bristol,  where 
Coleridge  meets  Joseph  Cottle,  a  young  bookseller,  who  lends 
hirn  money  to  pay  for  his  lodgings  and  those  of  the  other 
"  Pantisocratians "  at  48  College  Street;  Cottle  also  offers 
Coleridge  thirty  guineas  for  a  volume  of  poems  ;  during  the 
following  six  months  Coleridge  increases  his  income  some- 
what by  giving  at  least  eighteen  public  lectures,  mainly  on 
political  subjects  ;  although  the  volume  of  poems  is  not  com- 
pleted, Cottle  offers  him  one  and  one-half  guineas  for  every 
hundred  lines  written  after  the  completion  of  the  volume  ; 
with  this  assurance  of  support,  the  poet  promptly  marries 
SaraFricker,  on  October  4,  1795,  ten  days  before  the  marriage 
of  her  sister  to  Southey ;  the  Coleridges  settle  at  once  at  a 
small  one-story  cottage  at  Clevedon,  and  Southey  leaves  his 
bride  for  a  voyage  to  Portugal,  whence  he  writes  to  Coleridge 
that  the  scheme  of  "  Pantisocracy  "must  be  abandoned. 

Coleridge's  first  volume  of  poems,  including  three  sonnets 
by  Lamb,  is  published  by  Cottle  at  Bristol  in  April,  1796  ; 
he  now  proposes  to  establish  a  new  journal,  and  makes  a  tour 
of  Northern  England  in  search  of  subscribers  ;  he  secures  over 
a  thousand  subscribers,  establishes  The  Watchman,  an  eight- 
day  paper,  issues  just  five  editions,  and  then  abandons  the 
venture  on  the  ground  that  it  does  not  pay  expenses  ;  mean- 
time Coleridge  has  become  an  occasional  preacher  at  Unitarian 
chapels,  and  considers  seriously  the  idea  of  becoming  a  regu- 
lar minister  of  that  sect  ;  while  at  Birmingham,  during  his 
tour  in  search  for  subscribers,  he  had  met  a  young  banker, 
Charles  Lloyd,  who  was  so  fascinated  by  Coleridge's  conver- 
sation that  he  gave  up  his  business,  and  soon  afterward  came 


414  COLERIDGE 

to  Bristol  to  live  with  the  poet  and  to  contribute  largely  to  his 
support;  in  the  winter  of  1796-97  Coleridge  and  Lloyd  re- 
move to  a  small  house  at  Nether  Stowey,  near  Bridge  water, 
where  Coleridge's  friend,  Thomas  Poole,  raises  a  subscription 
sufficient  to  provide  the  poet  with  a  small  annuity  ;  3  second 
edition  of  Coleridge's  poems,  with  some  by  Lloyd  and  Lamb, 
appears  in  1797  ;  Lamb  and  his  sister  visit  Coleridge  at 
Nether  Stowey  in  June,  1797,  and  soon  afterward  Wordsworth 
settles  at  Alfoxden,  near  Nether  Stowey,  in  order  to  be  near 
Coleridge  ;  while  at  Nether  Stosrey  Coleridge  writes  "Osorio," 
afterward  called  "  Remorse,"  and  refuses  thirty  guineas  offered 
by  Cottle  for  the  drama  because  Coleridge  hepes  to  have  it 
produced  on  the  stage,  but  Sheridan  ignores  it ;  during  1797 
and  1798  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  collaborate  in  writing 
the  "  Lyrical  Ballads,"  which  are  published  in  September, 
1798;  Coleridge's  principal  contribution  to  the  volume  was 
"The  Ancient  Mariner,"  to  which  Wordsworth  contributed 
a  few  lines  ;  during  1797  Coleridge  also  writes  the  first  parts 
of  "  Christabel  "  and  "  Kubla  Khan,"  although  these  poems 
were  not  published  till  eighteen  years  afterward  ;  the  volume 
'"'Lyrical  Ballads"  was  a  financial  failure,  and  when  Cottle 
sold  out  to  the  Longmans,  a  little  later,  the  copyright  was 
listed  as  having  no  value ;  Lloyd  leaves  Coleridge  during 
1798,  and  the  poet  renews,  for  a  time,  his  former  practice  of 
preaching  in  Unitarian  pulpits  ;  about  this  time  his  friend 
Josiah  Wedgwood  offers  Coleridge  an  annuity  of  ^150  on 
condition  that  he  will  decline  a  proffered  pastorship  at  Shrews- 
bury and  devote  himself  henceforth  to  philosophy  ;  after  some 
hesitation  Coleridge  accepts  the  offer,  and  thereupon  severs  his 
connection  with  the  Unitarian  body. 

In  September,  1798,  he  starts  for  Germany  with  Words- 
worth and  Wordsworth's  sister,  Coleridge's  expenses  being 
borne  by  Wedgwood  ;  the  poets  visit  Klopstock  at  Ham- 
burg, and  when  the  Wordsworths  go  to  Goslar,  Coleridge  set- 
tles at  Ratzeburg,  where  he  studies  German  diligently  with  a 


COLERIDGE  415 

Protestant  pastor  ;  in  January,  1799,  he  goes  to  the  University 
of  Gottingen,  where  he  "  indulges  freely  in  his  perennial  pas- 
time of  disquisition;  "  in  May,  1799,  he  makes  a  walking 
tour  through  the  Hartz  Mountains  and  writes  "  Lines  on 
Ascending  the  Brocken  ;  "  he  returns  to  England  in  June, 
1799,  visits  Nether  Stowey  and  the  Lake  country,  and  then 
shuts  himself  up  in  London  for  six  weeks  while  he  makes  his 
masterly  translation  of  Schiller's  "  Wallenstein,"  which  is  pub- 
lished in  1800  ;  Coleridge  had  already  contributed  occasion- 
ally to  the  Morning  Chronicle,  and  late  in  1799,  on  the 
recommendation  of  Mackintosh,  he  is  engaged  at  a  guinea  a 
week  as  a  regular  writer  for  the  then  newly  established  Morn- 
ing Post ;  his  most  successful  contribution  to  the  Post  is  "  The 
Devil's  Thoughts,"  of  which  a  part  was  written  by  Southey  ; 
Coleridge  afterward  declared  that  he  had  declined  an  offer 
of  a  half  interest  in  the  Post  and  in  the  Courier,  together 
worth  ^2,000  a  year,  saying  to  the  owner,  "I  would  not 
give  up  the  country  and  the  lazy  reading  of  old  books  for  two 
thousand  times  ,£2,000  ;  in  short,  beyond  £350  a  year  I  con- 
sider money  a  real  evil ;  "  but  this  statement  was  perhaps  one 
of  the  exaggerations  due  to  the  poet's  indulgence  in  opium. 

In  July,  1800,  Coleridge  removes,  with  his  family,  to  Greta 
Hall,  Keswick,  where  Southey  occupies  another  part  of  the 
same  house  from  1803  to  1809  >  at  Keswick,  in  1800,  he 
writes  the  second  part  of  "  Christabel  "  and  in  1802  his 
"  Ode  to  Dejection,"  in  which  he  bemoans  the  decline  of 
his  imaginative  powers;  as  early  as  1796  he  had  begun  to 
resort  to  laudanum  for  relief  from  rheumatic  and  neuralgic 
pains,  and  he  had  written  the  first  part  of  "  Kubla  Khan  " 
under  the  influence  of  the  drug  ;  in  1800  he  writes  of  taking 
opium  for  "the  pleasurable  sensations,"  and  by  1803  he  has 
become  a  confirmed  opium-eater ;  for  several  years  prior  to 
1814  he  takes  regularly  two  quarts  of  laudanum  a  week,  and 
during  one  week  he  records  taking  a  quart  in  twenty-four 
hours;  because  of  the  influence  of  the  drug  his  statements 


416  COLERIDGE 

about  himself  at  this  period  are  quite  untrustworthy  ;  his  nat- 
ural lack  of  business  ability  is  intensified,  he  becomes  gradu- 
ally estranged  from  his  wife,  and  he  leaves  his  family  to  be 
provided  for  by  Southey  ;  he  visits  Wales  with  Thomas  Wedg- 
wood in  1802  and  Scotland  with  the  Wordsworths  in  1803. 

In  April,  1804,  having  received  a  loan  of  ^£100  from 
Wordsworth  and  another  £100  from  his  brothers,  he  sails  for 
Malta,  and  there  acts,  for  several  months,  as  secretary  to  the 
governor  of  the  island,  Sir  Alexander  Ball ;  he  leaves  Malta 
in  September,  1805,  visits  Sicily  and  Naples,  spends  some 
months  in  Rome,  and  then  leaves  suddenly  for  England  on 
being  informed  by  the  Prussian  minister  that  Napoleon  has 
"marked"  him  because  of  certain  articles  previously  pub- 
lished by  Coleridge  and  reflecting  on  the  French  emperor  ; 
Coleridge's  vessel  is  said  to  have  been  pursued  by  a  French 
frigate,  and  he  is  said  to  have  thrown  overboard  his  papers, 
including  data  gathered  during  his  studies  in  Rome ;  he 
reaches  England  in  August,  1806,  "ill,  penniless,  and  worse 
than  homeless ;  "  he  visits  Wordsworth  and  other  friends,  and 
first  meets  De  Quincey  at  Bridgewater  in  1807  ;  De  Quincey 
makes  him  a  gift  of  ^300  ;  Coleridge  is  given  a  lodging  at 
the  Courier  office  in  London,  and,  in  the  spring  of  1808,  he 
earns  ^100  by  lecturing  at  the  Royal  Institution ;  later  in 
the  same  year  he  settles  at  Grasmere  as  a  member  of  Words- 
worth's family,  and  establishes  The  Friend,  a  journal  that 
exists  till  March,  1810;  then  for  a  time  Coleridge  lives  with 
Basil  Montagu  in  London  ;  then  he  lodges  with  his  old  friend 
John  Morgan,  of  Bristol,  most  of  the  time  till  1816,  though 
he  seems  to  have  been  a  kind  of  literary  tramp  during  this 
period  ;  his  lectures  on  Shakespeare  in  1810-11  excited  much 
interest,  and  were  attended  by  such  writers  as  Byron  and 
Rogers;  from  1812  to  1818  he  contributes  occasionally  to 
the  Courier ;  his  neglect  of  literary  endeavor  because  of 
opium-eating  becomes  finally  so  complete  that  his  pension 
from  the  Wedgwoods  is  withdrawn;  in  1824  he  becomes  one 


COLERIDGE  417 

often  "  royal  associates,"  who  receive  from  George  IV.  a 
pension  of^iooeach  till  the  death  of  that  monarch;  De 
Quincey  and  other  friends  contribute  to  Coleridge's  support, 
and  Byron  induces  the  Drury  Lane  committee  to  produce 
11  Remorse,"  which  has  a  run  of  twenty  nights,  and  brings  a 
good  financial  return  to  Coleridge ;  from  1813  to  1816  he 
is  so  completely  under  the  influence  of  opium  as  to  lose  the 
respect  of  most  of  his  friends,  although  he  completes  his 
"  Biographia  Literaria  "  by  1815. 

In  April,  1815,  Coleridge  is  received,  on  the  appeal  of  his 
physician,  as  a  guest  in  the  home  of  Mr.  Oilman,  of  High- 
gate,  near  London,  and  here  he  remains,  with  slight  excep- 
tions, till  his  death,  meanwhile  making  a  heroic  and  partially 
successful  endeavor  to  discard  the  use  of  opium  ;  at  Byron's 
request  for  a  tragedy  Coleridge  writes  "Zapolya,"  which  is 
rejected  by  the  theatres,  but  is  published  by  Murray  in  1817 
as  a  "Christmas  Tale;"  meantime,  in  1816,  Murray  has 
published  "  Christabel "  with  "  Kubla  Khan  "  and  "The 
Pains  of  Sleep  ;  "  three  editions  of  this  volume  were  sold  in  a 
year;  in  1816  and  1817  are  published  two  of  Coleridge's 
"Lay  Sermons,"  and  in  1817  a  collection  of  his  poems 
called  "  Sibylline  Leaves  "  and  the  "  Biographia  Literaria;  " 
Coleridge  gives  his  last  series  of  public  lectures  in  London  in 
the  winter  of  1818-19  to  "  crowded  and  sympathetic  audi- 
ences;  "  in  1820  appears  his  "  Essay  on  Church  and  State," 
and  in  1825  his  "Aids  to  Reflection;  "  meantime  he  has 
become  famous,  and  during  his  later  years  he  is  visited  by 
many  young  writers,  including  Emerson,  and  is  regarded  as 
almost  an  oracle;  most  of  the  time  after  1822  he  is  confined 
to  his  room  and  his  bed,  but  in  1828  he  travels  up  the  Rhine 
with  the  Wordsworths,  and  in  1833  he  visits  Cambridge;  he 
dies  at  Highgate,  London,  July  25,  1834. 

27 


418  COLERIDGE 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF    CRITICISM    ON   COLERIDGE. 

Dowden,   E.,   "Studies  in  Literature."     London,  1878,  Kegan  Paul  & 

Co.,  10-16. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  "  Life  of  John  Sterling."     London,  1852,  Chapman  & 

Hall,  69-80. 

De  Quincey,  T.,  "Works."     Edinburgh,  1890,  Black,  2:  138-225. 
Stephen,   L.,    "Hours  in  a  Library."     New  York,  1894,  Smith,  Elder 

&  Co.,  339-368. 

Hazlitt,  Wm.,  "  The  Spirit  of  the  Age."     London,  1886,  Bell,  43-48 
Traill,  H.  D.,  "  English  Men  of  Letters."     New  York,  1889,  Macmil- 

lan,  v.  index. 
Whipple,   E.    P.,    "Essays  and  Reviews."     Boston,    1861,  Ticknor  & 

Fields,  299-334. 
Shairp,  J.  S.  C.,  "Studies  in  Poetry  and  Philosophy."     Boston,  1889, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  133-203. 

Pater,  W.,  "Appreciations."     London,  1890,  Macmillan,  65-106. 
Stedman,  E.  C.,  "The  Nature  of  Poetry."     Boston,  1893,   Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  147-185. 
Swinburne,   A.    C.,    "Essays  and  Studies"     London,  1875,   Chatto  & 

Windus,  259-275. 
Lowell,   J.    R.,    "  Democracy  and   Other   Addresses."     Boston,    1887, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  91-103. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  "  Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,  1878,   Moxon, 

237-255. 
Bayne,  P.,  "  Essays  in  Biography  and  Criticism."     Boston,  1858,  Gould 

&  Lincoln,  108-148. 
Child,  F.  J.,  "  British  Poets."     Boston,  n.  d.,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co., 

v.  index. 
Caine,  H.,  "  Coleridge  "  (Great  Writer  Series).      London,  1887,  Walter 

Scott,  v.  index. 
Reed,   H.,   "British  Poets."     Philadelphia,  1857,  Parry  &  Macmillan, 

88-126. 
Gilfillan,  G.,  "Third  Gallery  of  Literary  Portraits."     Edinburgh,  1854, 

James  Hogg,  215-226. 
Oliphant,    Mrs.,    "The  Literary  History  of  England,"  etc.     London, 

1889,  Macmillan,  I  :  243-283. 
Cottle,  J.,  "  Reminiscences  of  S.  T.  Coleridge."     London,  1848,  Houl- 

ston  &  Stonman,  v.  index. 

Gillman,  "  Life  of  S.  T.  Coleridge."    London,  1838,  Pickering,  v.  index. 
Mason,  E.  T.,  "  Personal  Traits  of  British  Authors."     New  York,  1885, 

Scribner,  2  :  57-109. 


COLERIDGE  419 

Allsop,  T.,  "  Letters,  Conversations,  and  Recollections  of  S.  T.  Cole- 
ridge." London,  1858,  Groombridge,  v.  index. 

Brandt,  A.,  "Coleridge  and  the  Romantic  School."  London,  1887, 
Murray,  v.  index. 

Woodberry,  G.  E.,  "  Studies  in  Literature."  Boston,  1890,  Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.,  188-209. 

Foster,  J.,  "Critical  Essays."     London,  1877,  Bell,  2  :  1-24. 

Ward,  T.  H.,  "English  Poets"  (Pater).  London,  1881,  Macmillan, 
102-114. 

Brooke,  S.  A.,  "Theology  in  the  English  Poets."  London,  1874,  H. 
S.  King,  69-93. 

Chorley,    H.    T.,    "Authors   of   England."     London,    1888,    C.    Tilt, 

37-43- 

Mitford,  M.  R.,  "  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."  New  York,  1851, 
Harper,  386-398. 

Courthope,  W.  J.,  "The  Liberal  Movement  in  English  Literature." 
London,  1885,  Murray,  159-197. 

Martineau,  J.,  "Essays,  Philosophical  and  Theological. "  Boston,  1866, 
W.  N.  Spencer,  329-406. 

Wilson,  Prof.  J.,  "  Noctes  Ambrosiana"  Edinburgh,  1856,  Black- 
wood,  vols.  I  and  2,  v.  index. 

Atlantic  Monthly,  45  :  483-498  (G.  P.  Lathrop). 

Bibliotheca  Sacra,  4:  117-171  (Noah  Porter). 

Black-wood's  Magazine,  57:  117-132  (De  Quincey). 

Contemporary  Review,  67  :  876-887  (Andrew  Lang)  ;  67  :  548-569  (J. 
Wedgwood). 

Critic,  6  :  249-250  (J.  R.  Lowell). 

Edinburgh  Review,  28:  488-515  (W.  Hazlitt). 

Fortnightly  Review,  43  :  11-25  (J-  Tulloch) ;   52  :  342-366  (E.  Dowden). 

North  American  Review,  40:  299-351  (G.  B.  Cheever). 

National  Review,  5  :  504-518  (J.  Martineau). 

Westminster  Review,  33:  257-302  (J.  S.  Mill). 

National  Review,  25  :  318-327  (L.  Stephen). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

A/I.  Miltonic  Eloquence— Sublimity.— "A  sublime 
man  who,  alone  in  those  dark  days,  had  saved  his  crown  of 
spiritual  manhood,  escaping  from  the  black  materialisms  and 
revolutionary  deluges  with  '  God,  freedom,  and  immortality ' 
still  his  ;  a  king  of  men." — Carlyle. 


42O  COLERIDGE 

"  The  majestic  rush  and  roar  of  that  irregular  anapaestic 
measure,  used  once  or  twice  by  this  supreme  master  of  them 
all,  no  student  can  follow  without  an  exultation  of  enjoyment. 
The  '  Hymn  to  the  Earth '  has  a  sonorous  and  oceanic 
strength  of  harmony,  a  grace  and  glory  of  life,  that  fill  the 
sense  with  a  vigorous  delight." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  His  genius  at  that  time  [1798]  had  angelic  wings  and  fed 
on  manna.  .  .  .  His  thoughts  did  not  seem  to  come 
with  labor  and  effort  but  as  if  borne  on  the  gusts  of  genius 
and  as  if  the  wings  of  imagination  lifted  him  from  off  his 
feet.  .  .  .  His  voice  rolled  on  the  ear  like  the  pealing 
organ,  and  its  song  alone  was  the  music  of  thought.  His 
mind  was  clothed  with  wings,  and,  raised  on  them,  he  lifted 
philosophy  to  heaven." — William  Hazlitt. 

"He -has  gone  about  in  the  true  spirit  of  an  old  Greek 
bard,  with  a  noble  carelessness  of  self,  giving  fit  utterance  to 
the  divine  spirit  within  him.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing 
more  wonderful  than  the  facile  majesty  of  his  images  or  rather 
of  his  world  of- imagery,  which,  whether  in  his  poetry  or  his 
prose,  starts  up  before  us  self-raised  and  all-perfect,  like  the 
palace  of  Aladdin.  He  ascends  the  sublimest  truths  by  a 
winding  track  of  sparkling  glory." — T.  N.  Talfourd. 

"  Nature  moved  Coleridge  to  eloquence,  rhapsody,  and 
worship  as  an  artist  to  imaginative  mysticism." — E.  C. 
Stedman. 

"  In  divine  things  Coleridge's  poetry  takes  on  a  Miltonic 
majesty  of  diction  and  a  Miltonic  stateliness  of  rhyme.  It  is 
as  if  some  sweet  and  solemn  strain  of  organ  music  had  suc- 
ceeded to  the  blast  of  the  war-bugles  and  the  roll  of  drums." 
—H.  &.  Traill. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Hast  thou  a  charm  to  stay  the  morning-star 
In  his  steep  course  ?     So  long  he  seems  to  pause 
On  thy  bald  awful  head,  O  sovran  Blanc  ! 
The  Arve  and  Arveiron  at  thy  base 


COLERIDGE  42 1 

Rave  ceaselessly  ;  but  thou,  most  awful  Form ! 
Risest  from  forth  thy  silent  sea  of  pines, 
How  silently  !     Around  thee  and  above 
Deep  is  the  air  and  dark,  substantial,  black, 
An  ebon  mass  :  methinks  thou  piercest  it 
As  with  a  wedge  !     But  when  I  look  again, 
It  is  thine  own  calm  home,  thy  crystal  shrine, 
Thy  habitation  from  eternity ! 

0  dread  and  silent  Mount !     I  gazed  upon  thee, 
Till  thou,  still  present  to  the  bodily  sense, 

Didst  vanish  from  my  thought  :  entranced  in  prayer 

1  worshipped  the  Invisible  alone." 

— Hymn  in  the  Vale  of  Chamouni. 

"  Ye  Clouds  !  that  far  above  me  float  and  pause, 
Whose  pathless  march  no  mortal  can  control ! 
Ye  Ocean- waves  !  that,  wheresoe'er  ye  roll, 
Yield  homage  only  to  eternal  laws  ! 
Ye  woods  !  that  listen  to  the  night-bird's  singing, 
O  ye  loud  waves  !  and  O  ye  Forests  high  ! 
And  O  ye  clouds  that  far  above  me  soar'd  ! 
Thou  rising  sun  !  thou  blue  rejoicing  sky  ! 
Yea,  everything  that  is,  and  will  be  free  ! 
Bear  witness  for  me,  wheresoe'er  ye  be, 
With  what  deep  worship  I  have  still  adored 
The  spirit  of  divinest  liberty."—  The  Destiny  of  Nations. 

"  O  Spirit  blest ! 

Whether  the  Eternal's  throne  around, 
Amidst  the  blaze  of  Seraphim, 
Thou  pourest  forth  the  grateful  hymn, 
Or  soaring  through  the  blest  domain 
Enrapturest  angels  with  thy  strain, 
Grant  me,  like  thee,  the  lyre  to  sound, 
Like  thee  with  fire  divine  to  glow  ; 
But  ah  !  when  rage  the  waves  of  woe, 
Grant  me  with  firmer  breast  to  meet  their  hate 
And  soar  beyond  the  storm  with  upright  eyes  elate  !  " 
— On  the  Death  of  Chatter  ton. 


COLERIDGE 

2.  Realistic  Supernaturalism. — '  <  Coleridge  has  been 
peculiarly  successful  in  reducing  to  the  fetters  of  time  and 
place  certain  things  in  their  nature  evanescent.  There  are 
certain  moods,  lasting  but  a  little  while,  which  cannot  be  ex- 
plained by  any  patent  mental  philosophy  that  I  am  aware  of. 
.  .  .  In  reading  '  Kubla  Khan  '  we  seem  rapt  into  that 
paradise  revealed  to  Swedenborg,  where  music  and  color  and 
perfume  were  one,  where  you  could  hear  the  hues  and  see  the 
harmonies  of  heaven." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

11  His  theology  of  nature  went  through  two  phases.  The 
first,  in  his  world-going  period,  is  very  fantastic.  There  are 
multitudes  of  spirits,  he  conceived,  belonging  to  the  service  of 
God  ;  some  contemplating  spirits,  who  gazed  forever  on  the 
front  of  Deity;  some  in  whose  hands  lay  the  guidance  and  fate 
of  nations,  but  others  who  were  the  forming  spirits  of  creation, 
by  whose  operation  all  nature  grew  and  made  itself  and  died  and 
was  born  again.  .  .  .  Nature,  therefore,  in  all  its  myriad 
forms,  is  ever  alive  in  God.  .  .  .  He  [Coleridge]  changes 
afterward  to  the  idea  that  it  is  that  of  God  in  us  that  makes 
nature  to  us.  The  existence  of  the  outward  world  is  only  phe- 
nomenal, not  actual.  We  have  given  us  the  forms  of  things  in 
thought ;  and,  thinking  these,  we  see,  hear,  and  feel  them,  and 
build  up  the  world  of  nature  for  ourselves." — Stopford Brooke. 

"  Wordsworth  gives  us  a  series  of  realistic  themes  ;  Cole- 
ridge gives  us  supernatural  incident  possessed  with  the  reality 
of  human  interest.  Pater  speaks  of  this  characteristic  as  «  ro- 
mantic weirdness  ;  the  imaginative  apprehension  of  the  silent 
and  unseen  processes  of  nature.'  " — Hall  Came. 

"  For  his  poetry,  his  philosophical  criticism,  and  the  tradi- 
tion of  his  conversation,  Coleridge  will  probably  be  most 
esteemed  by  posterity.  As  a  poet,  we  think  that  his  genius  is 
displayed  with  the  most  wonderful  effect  in  '  Christabel,'  and 
'The  Ancient  Mariner.'  In  these  the  mystical  element  of 
human  nature  has  its  finest  poetical  embodiment.  They  act 
upon  the  mind  with  a  weird-like  influence,  searching  out  the 


COLERIDGE  423 

most  obscure  recesses  of  the  soul  and  making  mysterious  emo- 
tions in  the  very  centre  of  our  being  and  then  sending  them  to 
glide  and  tingle  along  every  nerve  and  vein  with  the  effect  of 
enchantment.  It  is  as  if  we  were  possessed  with  a  subtle  insan- 
ity or  had  stolen  a  glance  into  the  occult  secrets  of  the  universe. 
All  our  customary  impressions  of  things  are  shaken  by  the  in- 
trusion of  an  indefinite  sense  of  fear  and  amazement  into  the 
soul.  .  .  .  He  could  likewise  stir  that  supernatural  fear 
in  the  heart  which  he  has  so  powerfully  expressed  in  one  stanza 
of  '  The  Ancient  Mariner' — a  fear  from  which  no  person,  poet 
or  prosaist,  has  ever  been  entirely  free,  and  which  makes  the 
blood  of  the  pleasantest  atheist  at  times  turn  cold  and  his  phi- 
losophy slide  away  under  his  feet." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"He  who  has  seen  a  mouldering  tower  by  the  side  of  a 
crystal  lake,  hid  by  the  mist  but  glittering  in  the  wave  below, 
may  conceive  the  dim,  glimmering,  uncertain  intelligence  of 
his  eye  ;  he  who  has  marked  the  evening  clouds  uprolled  (a 
world  of  vapors)  has  seen  the  picture  of  his  mind,  unearthly, 
unsubstantial,  with  gorgeous  tints  and  ever  varying  forms." 
—  William  Hazlitt. 

"  In  '  Christabel '  the  human  and  the  supernatural  elements 
interpenetrate  each  other  more  completely  and  more  subtly 
than  in  «  The  Ancient  Mariner. '  The  presence  of  higher  than 
mortal  powers  for  evil  and  for  good  is  everywhere  felt,  yet 
nowhere  is  it  thrust  forward.  .  .  .  Although  .  .  . 
we  are  aware  of  the  ghostly  presence  of  the  maiden's  mother, 
we  never  see  the  phantom.  .  .  .  But  Coleridge  has  else- 
where created  a  visible  ghost,  a  ghost  which  appears  under  the 
strangest  circumstances,  a  ghost  itself  so  strange  that  Coleridge 
may  be  said  to  have  invented  a  new  spiritual  fear. 
Here  again  in  the  '  Wanderings  of  Cain  '  loveliness  and  terror 
are  allied. "  — Edward  Dow  den. 

"The  world  ...  in  which  the  strange  history  of 
'  The  Ancient  Mariner  '  was  transacted  .  .  .  is  a  world 
in  which  both  animated  things  and  brooks  and  clouds  and 


424  COLERIDGE 

plants  are  moved  by  spiritual  agency ;  in  which,  as  he  would 
put  it,  the  veil  of  the  senses  is  nothing  but  a  symbolism, 
everywhere  telling  of  unseen  and  supernatural  forces.  What 
we  call  the  solid  and  the  substantial  becomes  a  dream ;  and 
the  dream  is  the  true  underlying  reality." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  It  is  the  delicacy,  the  dreamy  grace,  in  his  presentation 
of  the  marvellous,  which  makes  Coleridge's  work  so  remark- 
able. .  .  .  Coleridge's  power  is  in  the  very  fineness  with 
which,  as  by  some  really  ghostly  finger,  he  brings  home  to  our 
inmost  sense  his  inventions,  daring  as  they  are.  .  .  . 
'  The  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner '  has  the  plausibility,  the 
perfect  adaptation  to  reason,  and  the  general  aspect  of  life, 
which  belong  to  the  marvellous,  when  actually  presented  as 
part  of  a  credible  experience  in  our  dreams." — Walter  Pater. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  western  wave  was  all  aflame, 
The  day  was  well-nigh  done  ! 
Almost  upon  the  western  wave 
Rested  the  broad  bright  sun  ; 
When  that  strange  shape  drove  suddenly 
Betwixt  us  and  the  sun. 

And  straight  the  sun  was  flecked  with  bars, 
(Heaven's  mother  show  us  grace  ! ) 
As  if  through  a  dungeon  gate  he  peered 
With  broad  and  burning  face. 

Alas!  (thought  I,  and  my  heart  beat  loud) 
How  fast  she  nears  and  nears  ! 
Are  those  her  sails  that  glance  in  the  sun 
Like  restless  gossameres  ? 

Are  those  her  ribs  through  which  the  sun 
Did  peer,  as  through  a  grate  ? 
And  is  that  woman  all  her  crew  ? 
Is  that  a  Death  ?  and  are  there  two  ? 
Is  Death  that  woman's  mate  ?  " 

— Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner. 


COLERIDGE  425 

"The  maid,  devoid  of  guile  and  sin, 
I  know  not  how,  in  fearful  wise 
So  deeply  had  she  drunken  in 
That  look,  those  shrunken  serpent  eyes, 
That  all  the  features  were  resigned 
To  this  sole  image  of  her  mind  ; 
And  passively  did  imitate 
That  look  of  dull  and  treacherous  hate, 
And  thus  she  stood  in  dizzy  trance, 
Still  picturing  that  look  askance 
With  forced  unconscious  sympathy 
Full  before  her  father's  v\evf."—Christabel. 

"  From  his  obscure  haunt 
Shrieked  Fear,  of  Cruelty  the  ghastly  dam, 
Feverous  yet  freezing,  eager-paced  yet  slow, 
As  she  that  creeps  forth  from  her  swampy  reeds, 
Ague,  the  biform  hag !  when  early  Spring 
Beams  on  the  marsh-bred  vapours." 

—  The  Destiny  of  Nations. 

Musical  Versification. — "  For  absolute  melody  and 
splendor  it  were  hardly  rash  to  call  it  ['  Kubla  Khan  ']  the 
first  poem  in  the  language.  An  exquisite  instinct  married  to 
a  subtle  science  of  verse  has  made  it  the  supreme  model  of 
music  in  our  language.  .  .  .  Shelley,  indeed,  conies 
nearest ;  but  for  purity  and  volume  of  music  Shelley  is  to 
Coleridge  as  a  lark  to  a  nightingale  ;  his  song  is  heaven — high 
and  clear  as  heaven,  but  the  other's  is  more  rich  and  weighty, 
more  passionately  various  and  warmer  in  the  effusion  of 
sound.  .  .  .  His  '  subtle  sway  and  masterdom  '  of  music 
could  make  sweet  and  strong  even  the  feeble  and  tuneless  form 
of  metre  called  hexameter  in  English.  .  .  .  All  the  ele- 
ments that  compose  the  perfect  form  of  English  metre,  as  limbs 
and  veins  and  features  a  beautiful  body  of  man,  were  more 
familiar,  more  subject,  as  it  were,  to  this  great  poet  than  to 
any  other.  How,  for  instance,  no  less  than  rhyme,  assonance 
and  alliteration  are  forces,  requisite  components  of  high  and 


426  COLERIDGE 

ample  harmony,  witness  once  for  all  the  divine  passage  which 
begins — '  Five  miles  meandering  with  a  mazy  motion.'  .  .  . 
Gycine's  song  flashes  out  like  a  visible  sunbeam  :  it  is  one  of 
the  brightest  bits  of  music  ever  done  in  words." — A.  C.  Swin- 
burne. 

i(  Coleridge  has  taken  the  old  ballad  measure  and  given  it, 
by  an  indefinable  charm  wholly  his  own,  all  the  sweetness,  all 
the  melody  and  compass  of  a  symphony.  .  .  .  The  words 
seem  common  words  enough,  but  in  the  order  of  them,  in  the 
choice,  variety,  and  position  of  the  vowel  sounds,  they  be- 
come magical.  The  most  decrepit  vocable  in  the  language 
throws  away  its  crutches  to  dance  and  sing  at  his  piping." — 
Lowell. 

In  his  *  France  '  .  .  .  freedom  in  artistic  handling 
is  at  one  with  obedience  to  artistic  law.  Mr.  Theodore  Watts 
.  .  .  has  called  attention  to  what  he  describes  as  its  fluid- 
ity of  metrical  movement.  '  The  more  billowy  the  metrical 
waves,'  he  says,  *  the  better  suited  they  are  to  render  the  emo- 
tions expressed  by  the  ode  ;  '  and  he  points  out  how  in  the 
opening  stanza  of  '  France  '  the  first  metrical  wave,  after  it 
has  gently  fallen  at  the  end  of  the  first  quatrain,  leaps  up  again 
on  the  double  rhymes  and  goes  bounding  on,  billow  after  bil- 
low, to  the  end  of  the  stanza.  The  mastery  of  a  prolonged 
period  in  lyrical  poetry  is  rare  even  with  great  writers." — 
Edward  Dow  den. 

"  For  exquisite  music  of  metrical  movement  and  for  im- 
aginative phantasy  .  .  .  there  is  nothing  in  our  lan- 
guage to  be  compared  with  '  Christabel '  and  '  Kubla  Khan  ' 
and  with  the  '  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner.'  '  — Stopford 
Brooke. 

"  It  ['  The  Ancient  Mariner  ']  has  that  rich,  varied  move- 
ment in  the  verse  which  gives  a  distinct  idea  of  the  lofty 
or  changeful  tones  of  Mr.  Coleridge's  voice." — William 
Hazlitt. 

"  The  Coleridge  of  the  imaginative,  haunting  melody  and 


COLERIDGE  427 

sovereign  judgment  unparalleled  in  his  time." — E.  C.  Sted- 
man. 

11  The  harmony  and  variety  of  Coleridge's  versification,  his 
exquisite  delineations  of  the  heart,  his  command  of  imagery, 
his  '  wide-wandering  magnificence  of  imagination,'  have  so 
often  been  the  theme  of  admiring  comment  that  they  need  not 
be  dwelt  on  here."—  E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  The  last  of  these  ['  Tears  in  Solitude  ']  opens  and  closes 
with  some  of  his  best  blank  verses,  full  of  lambent  light  and  his 
own  exquisite  music  ;  the  language  so  simple  yet 

so  aerially  musical,  the  rhythm  so  original  yet  so  fitted  to  the 
story  [of  <  Christabel  ']."—/.  C.  Shairp. 

"  Coleridge  is,  in  fact,  the  great  musician  of  the  romantic 
school  of  English  poetry.  His  practice  is  the  exact  antithesis 
of  Wordsworth's  theory  that  there  is  no  essential  difference  be- 
tween the  language  of  poetry  and  that  of  prose.  In  him  met- 
rical movement  was  all  in  all.  He  was  the  first  to  depart  from 
the  lofty  iambic  movement  which  had  satisfied  the  feeling  of 
the  eighteenth  century  and,  by  associating  picturesque  images 
and  antique  phrases  in  melodious  and  pleasing  metre,  to  set 
the  imagination  free  in  a  world  quite  removed  from  actual 
experience." — W.  J.  Courthope. 

11  '  Kubla  Khan  '  is  an  ecstasy  of  sound." — William  Jtos- 
setti. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  night  is  chill ;  the  forest  bare  ; 
Is  it  the  wind  that  moaneth  bleak  ? 
There  is  not  wind  enough  in  the  air 
To  move  away  the  ringlet  curl 
From  the  lovely  lady's  cheek — 
There  is  not  wind  enough  to  twirl 
The  one  red  leaf,  the  last  of  its  clan, 
That  dances  as  often  as  dance  it  can, 
Hanging  so  light,  and  hanging  so  high, 
On  the  topmost  twig  that  looks  up  at  the  sky." 

— Christabel. 


428  COLERIDGE 

"  The  little  cloud — it  floats  away, 
Away  it  goes  ;  away  so  soon  ? 
Alas  !  it  has  no  power  to  stay  : 
Its  hues  are  dim,  its  hues  are  gray — 
Away  it  passes  from  the  moon  ! 
How  mournfully  it  seems  to  fly, 
Ever  fading  more  and  more, 
To  joyless  regions  of  the  sky — 
And  now  'tis  whiter  than  before  !  " — Lewii. 

"  A  little  child,  a  limber  elf, 
Singing,  dancing  to  itself 
A  fairy  thing  with  red  round  cheeks 
That  always  finds  and  never  seeks 
Makes  such  a  vision  to  the  sight 
As  fills  a  father's  eyes  with  light."—  Christabel. 

\  4.  Picturesqueness. — "  It  is  in  a  highly  sensitive  ap- 
prehension of  the  aspects  of  external  nature  that  Coleridge 
identifies  himself  most  closely  with  one  of  the  main  tendencies 
of  the  Lake  School.  ...  A  characteristic  watchfulness 
for  the  minute  fact  and  expression  of  natural  scenery  pervades 
all  he  writes — a  closeness  to  the  exact  physiognomy  of  nat- 
ure. .  .  .  This  induces  in  him  no  indifference  to  actual 
color  and  form  and  process  but  such  minute  realism  as  this — 

'  The  thin  grey  cloud  is  spread  on  high, 
It  covers  but  not  hides  the  sky. 
The  moon  is  behind  and  at  the  full ; 
And  yet  she  looks  both  small  and  dull.'  " 

—  Walter  Pater. 

"  And  how  picturesque  it  ['  The  Ancient  Mariner  ']  is  in 
the  proper  sense  of  the  word  !  I  know  nothing  like  it.  There 
is  not  a  description  in  it.  It  is  all  picture.  Descriptive  poets 
generally  confuse  us  through  multiplicity  of  detail ;  we  cannot 
see  their  forest  for  the  trees  :  but  Coleridge  never  errs  in  this 
way.  With  instinctive  tact  he  touches  the  right  chord  of  as- 
sociation and  is  satisfied,  as  we  also  are." — Lowell* 


COLERIDGE  429 

"  If  we  would  find  a  poetical  rendering  of  the  landscape  of 
Quantocks,  with  its  unambitious  loveliness  of  coomb  and  cliff, 

and  again  those  fine  bursts  of  prospect, 
we  must  turn  to  the  Nether  Stowey  poems  of  Coleridge. 
.  .  .  Assuredly,  the  writer,  .  .  .  who  was  a  travel- 
ler at  times  through  cloudland,  and  who  could  create  from 
his  imagination  such  visions  as  those  of  '  Kubla  Khan.'  had 
also  his  foot  on  English  grass  and  heather,  and  writing,  to  use 
Wordsworth's  phrase,  with  his  eye  upon  the  object,  was  able 
to  add  a  page  of  rare  fidelity  to  the  descriptive  poetry  of  our 
country.  .  .  .  How  exquisite  is  the  description  of  the 
journeying  moon,  what  magic  in  the  simplest  words  : 

*  The  moving  moon  went  up  the  sky, 
And  nowhere  did  abide  ; 
Softly  she  was  going  up 
With  a  star  or  two  beside.'" 

— Edward  Dowden. 

"  In  his  descriptions  you  saw  the  progress  of  human  happi- 
ness and  liberty  in  bright  and  never-ending  succession,  like 
the  steps  of  Jacob's  ladder,  with  airy  shapes  ascending  and  de- 
scending and  with  the  voice  of  God  at  the  top  of  the  ladder." 
—  William  Hazlitt. 

"  Talfourd  writes  of  seeing  '  the  palm-trees  wave  and  the 
pyramids  tower  in  the  long  perspective  of  his  style  '—  .  .  . 
the  gorgeous  suggestiveness  of  his  poetry." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Oh  then  'twere  loveliest  sympathy  to  mark 
The  berries  of  the  half-uprooted  ash 
Dripping  and  bright  ;  and  list  the  torrents'  dash, 
Beneath  the  cypress  or  the  yew  more  dark, 
Seated  at  ease  on  some  smooth,  mossy  rock ; 

Till  high  o'erhead  his  beckoning  friend  appears. 
And  from  the  forehead  of  the  topmost  crag 
Shouts  eagerly  ;  for  haply  there  uprears 


430  COLERIDGE 

That  shadowing  pine  its  old  romantic  limbs 
Which  latest  shall  detain  the  enamoured  sight 
Seen  from  below,  whene'er  the  valley  dims, 
Tinged  yellow  with  the  rich  departing  light  ; 
And  haply,  basoned  in  some  unsunned  cleft, 
A  beauteous  spring,  the  rock's  collected  tears, 
Sleeps  sheltered  there,  scarce  wrinkled  by  the  gale." 

— To  a  Young  Friend. 

"  A  green  and  silent  spot,  amid  the  hills, 
A  small  and  silent  dell !     O'er  stiller  place 
No  singing  sky-lark  ever  poised  himself : 
The  hills  are  heathy,  save  that  swelling  slope 
Which  hath  a  gay  and  gorgeous  covering  on, 
All  golden  with  the  never-bloomless  furze, 
Which  now  blooms  most  profusely  :  but  the  dell, 
Bathed  by  the  mist,  is  fresh  and  delicate 
As  vernal  cornfield  or  the  unripe  flax, 
When,  through  its  half-transparent  stalks,  at  eve, 
The  level  sunshine  glimmers  with  green  light." 

— Fears  in  Solitude, 

"  As  when  a  shepherd  on  a  vernal  morn 

Through  some  thick  fog  creeps  tim'rous  with  slow  foot ; 

Darkling  he  fixes  on  th'  immediate  road 

His  downward  eye  :  all  else  of  fairest  kind 

Hid  or  deformed.     But  lo  !  the  bursting  Sun  ! 

Touched  by  the  enchantment  of  that  sudden  beam, 

Strait  the  black  vapour  melteth,  and  in  globes 

Of  dewy  glitter  gems  each  bank  and  tree  ; 

On  every  leaf,  on  every  blade  it  hangs  ! 

Dance  glad  the  new-born  intermingling  rays, 

And  wide  around  the  landscape  streams  with  glory  !  " 

— Religious  Musings. 

5.  Tenderness. — "The  tenderness  of  sentiment  which 
touches  with  significant  color  the  pure  white  imagination  is 
here  [in  '  The  Ancient  Mariner  ']  soft  and  piteous  enough,  but 
womanly  rather  than  effeminate." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 


COLERIDGE  431 

"  Critics  .  .  .  hardly  realize  enough  the  fine  human- 
ity in  Coleridge's  poetry.  .  .  .  '  I  conceive  the  leading 
point  about  Coleridge's  work,'  wrote  Dante  Rossetti,  '  is  its 
human  love. '  ...  To  understand  and  to  feel  his  poetry 
aright  we  must  think  of  him,  not  as  forever  floating  on  gold 
and  emerald  plumes  somewhere  above  Mount  Abora  and  feed- 
ing on  the  honey-dew  but  also  as  nestling  in  that  cottage  at 
Clevedon  or  at  Nether  Stowey  with  a  wife  and  child,  loving 
the  Somerset  hills  and  coombs,  rich  in  friendships,  and  deeply 
interested  in  the  great  public  events  of  his  own  time." — Ed- 
ward Dow  den. 

"  That  gift  of  handling  the  finer  passages  of  human  feeling 
at  once  with  power  and  delicacy  ...  is  illustrated  by 
a  passage  on  Friendship." — Walter  Pater. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  prayeth  well  who  loveth  well 
Both  man  and  bird  and  beast. 

He  prayeth  best  who  loveth  best 
All  things  both  great  and  small  ; 
For  the  dear  God,  who  loveth  us, 
He  made  and  loveth  all." 

— Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner. 

"  Dear  Babe,  that  sleepest  cradled  by  my  side, 
Whose  gentle  breathings,  heard  in  this  deep  calm, 
Fill  up  the  interspersed  vacancies 
And  momentary  pauses  of  the  thought ! 
My  babe  so  beautiful !  it  thrills  my  heart 
With  tender  gladness,  thus  to  look  at  thee, 
And  think  that  thou  shalt  learn  far  other  lore 
And  in  far  other  scenes !  " — Frost  at  Midnight. 

"  O  sweeter  than  the  marriage -feast, 
'Tis  sweeter  far  to  me, 
To  walk  together  to  the  kirk 
With  a  goodly  company  : 


432  COLERIDGE 

"  To  walk  together  to  the  kirk, 
And  all  together  pray, 
While  each  to  his  great  Father  bends, 
Old  men  and  babes  and  loving  friends 
And  youths  and  maidens  gay." 

— Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner. 

6.  Imaginative  Beauty — Finish. — "  Coleridge's  late 
poems,  'Youth  and  Age,'  '  The  Garden  of  Boccaccio,'  and 
'  Work  without  Hope  '  are  perfect,  flawless,  priceless.  .  .  . 
Of  passion  Coleridge  has  nothing ;  but  for  height  and  per- 
fection of  imaginative  quality  he  is  the  greatest  of  lyric 
poets.  .  .  .  His  style,  indeed,  was  a  plant  of  strangely 
slow  growth,  but  perfect  and  wonderful  in  its  final  flow- 
er. ...  Of  his  best  verses  I  venture  to  affirm  that  the 
world  has  nothing  like  them,  and  can  never  have ;  that  they 
are  of  the  highest  kind  and  of  their  own.  .  .  .  His 
poetry  at  the  highest  is  beyond  all  words  and  all  praise  of 
men.  He  who  can  define  it  could  unweave  a  rainbow.  He 
who  could  praise  it  aright  would  be  such  another  as  the  poet. 
There  is  a  charm  upon  these  pages  ['  Christabel '  and  '  Kubla 
Khan  ']  which  can  only  be  felt  in  silent  submission  of  wonder. 
1  The  Ancient  Mariner  '  is,  without  doubt,  one  of  the  triumphs 
of  poetry.  .  .  .  For  its  execution,  I  presume  no  human 
ear  is  too  dull  to  see  how  perfect  it  is  and  how  high  the  kind 
of  perfection.  Here  is  not  the  speckless  and  elaborate  finish 
which  shows  everywhere  the  fresh  rasp  of  file  or  chisel  on  its 
smooth  and  spruce  excellence  ;  this  is  faultless  after  the  fashion 
of  a  flower  or  a  tree.  Thus  it  has  grown  ;  not  thus  has  it 
been  carved.  .  .  .  Any  separate  line  has  its  own  heaven- 
ly beauty,  but  to  cite  separate  lines  is  intolerable.  They  are 
to  be  received  in  rapture  of  silence  :  such  a  silence  as  Chap- 
man describes  ;  silence  like  a  god,  peaceful  and  young,  which 

*  Left  so  free  mine  ears 
That  I  might  hear  the  music  of  the  spheres, 
And  all  the  angels  singing  out  of  heaven.'  " 

— A.  C.  Swinburne. 


COLERIDGE  433 

"  In  poetic  quality,  above  all  in  that  most  poetic  of  all 
qualities,  a  keen  sense  of  and  delight  in  beauty,  they  ['  The 
'  Ancient  Mariner  '  and  '  Christabel ']  are  quite  out  of  pro- 
portion to  his  other  compositions.  ...  A  warm  poetic 
joy  in  everything  beautiful,  whether  it  be  a  moral  sentiment, 
like  the  friendship  of  Roland  or  Leoline,  or  only  the  flakes  of 
falling  light  from  the  water-snakes — this  is  the  predominant 
quality  of  the  matter  of  his  poetry,  as  cadence  is  the  pre- 
dominant quality  of  its  form." — Walter  H.  Pater. 

"  He  certainly  was  a  main  influence  in  showing  the  English 
mind  how  it  could  emancipate  itself  from  the  vulgarizing 
tyranny  of  common  sense  and  in  teaching  it  to  recognize  in 
the  imagination  an  important  factor  not  only  in  the  happiness 
but  in  the  destiny  of  man.  ...  I  should  find  it  hard  to 
explain  the  singular  charm  of  his  diction  ;  there  is  so  much 
nicety  of  art  and  purpose  in  it,  whether  for  music  or  meaning. 
Nor  does  it  need  any  explanation,  for  we  all  feel  it. 
Coleridge's  words  have  the  unashamed  nakedness  of  Scripture, 
of  the  Eden  of  diction,  ere  the  voluble  serpent  entered  in. 
This  felicity  of  speech  in  Coleridge's  best  verse  is  more  re- 
markable because  it  was  an  acquisition.  .  .  .  When  he 
is  well  inspired,  as  in  his  best  poetry  he  commonly  is,  he  gives 
us  the  very  quintessence  of  perception,  the  clearly  crystallized 
precipitation  of  all  that  is  most  precious  in  the  ferment  of  im- 
pression after  the  impertinent  and  obtrusive  particles  have 
evaporated  from  the  memory.  It  is  the  pure,  visual  ecstasy 
disengaged  from  the  confused  and  confusing  material  that 
gives  it  birth.  It  seems  the  very  beatitude  of  artless  sim- 
plicity, and  is  the  most  finished  product  of  art. 
What  I  think  constitutes  his  great  power,  as  it  certainly  is 
his  greatest  charm,  is  the  perpetual  presence  of  imagina- 
tion. ...  His  fancy  and  his  diction  would  long  ago 
have  placed  him  above  all  his  contemporaries  had  they  been 
under  the  direction  of  a  sound  judgment  and  a  steady 
will.  .  .  .  He  has  written  some  of  the  most  poetical 
28 


434  COLERIDGE 

•poetry  in  the  language,  and  one  poem,  <  The  Ancient  Mariner,' 
not  only  unparalleled  but  unapproached  in  its  kind,  and  that 
kind  of  the  rarest.  .  .  .  This  [his  imagination]  was  the 
lifted  torch  (to  borrow  his  own  words  again)  that  bade  the 
starry  walls  of  passages,  dark  before  to  the  apprehension  of 
the  most  intelligent  reader,  sparkle  with  lustre,  latent  in  them 
to  be  sure,  but  not  all  their  own.  .  .  .  She  [imagina- 
tion] was  his  lifelong  house-mate,  if  not  always  hanging  over 
his  shoulders  and  whispering  in  his  ear,  yet  within  easy  call, 
like  the  Abra  of  Prior, 

'  Abra  was  with  him  ere  he  spoke  her  name  ; 
And  though  he  called  another,  Abra  came.'  " 

— Lowell. 

"  It  would  need  Coleridge  the  critic  to  discover  the  secrets 
of  the  genius  of  Coleridge  the  poet.  To  solve  intellectual 
puzzles  in  verse  ...  is,  after  all,  not  difficult ;  but  to 
find  expressions  in  the  language  of  thought  corresponding  to 
pure  melody  and  imaginative  loveliness,  is  a  finer  exercise  of 
wit.  .  .  .  The  device  of  animating  the  bodies  of  the 
dead  crew  with  a  troop  of  seraphs,  whether  the  suggestion  is 
due  to  St.  Paulinus  or  to  Wordsworth,  is  so  conceived  and 
executed  as  to  illustrate  admirably  Coleridge's  power  of  evok- 
ing beauty  out  of  horror.  Nor  are  his  strange  creatures  of  the 
sea  those  hideous  worms  which  a  vulgar  dealer  in  the  super- 
natural might  have  invented.  Seen  in  a  great  calm  by  the 
light  of  the  moon,  these  creatures  are  beautiful  in  the  joy  of 
their  life.  .  .  .  This  ode,  '  Recantation,'  is  remarkable 
.  .  .  on  account  of  the  logic  of  passion  and  imagination 
with  which  the  theme  is  involved." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  Coleridge  plainly  has  the  instinct  for  beauty  and  the  spell 
of  measured  words.  .  .  .  The  marvellous  'Rime/  with 
its  ghostly  crew,  its  spectral  seas,  its  transformation  of  the 
elements,  is  pure  and  high-sustained  imagination.  .  .  . 
In  '  Christabel '  both  the  terror  and  the  loveliness  are  haunt- 
ing."— E.  C.  Stedman. 


COLERIDGE  435 

"  No  man  has  all  the  sources  of  poetry  in  such  profusion." 
—Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  His  metaphors  are  often  unique  and  beautiful. 
It  may  be  questioned  if  any  modern  writer,  whose  works  are 
equally  limited,  has  illustrated  his  ideas  with  more  originality 
and  interest." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  He  robes  himself  in  moonlight  and  moves  among  images 
of  which  we  cannot  be  assured  for  a  while  whether  they  are 
substantial  forms  of  sense  or  fantastic  visions." — John  Foster. 

((  No  doubt  he  had  imagination  enough  ...  to  have 
furnished  forth  a  thousand  poets." — J.  C.  Shairp. 

"  He  has  only  to  draw  the  slides  of  his  imagination,  and  a 
thousand  subjects  expand  before  him,  startling  him  with  their 
brilliancy  or  losing  themselves  in  endless  obscurity. 
It  ['The  Ancient  Mariner']  is  unquestionably  a  work  of  genius 
— of  wild,  irregular,  overwhelming  imagination." — William 
Hazlitt. 

"They  [<  The  Friend'  and  'Aids  to  Reflection']  excite 
wonder  because  the  processes  of  the  imagination  and  under- 
standing are  continually  crossing  each  other  and  producing 
magnificent  disorder.  Visions  intermingle  with  deductions 
and  inference  follows  image.  He  thinks  emotions  and  feels 
thoughts." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When  the  bent  flower  beneath  the  night-dew  weeps 
And  on  the  lake  the  silver  lustre  sleeps, 
Amid  the  paly  radiance  soft  and  sad, 
She  meets  my  lonely  path  in  moon-beams  clad." 

— Lines  on  an  Autumnal  Evening. 

"  The  moon  shines  dim  in  the  open  air, 
And  not  a  moonbeam  enters  here. 
But  they  without  its  light  can  see 
The  chamber  carved  so  curiously, 


436  COLERIDGE 

Carved  with  figures  strange  and  sweet, 

All  made  out  of  the  carver's  brain, 

For  a  lady's  chamber  meet  : 

The  lamp  with  two-fold  silver  chain 

Is  fastened  to  an  angel's  feet. 

The  silver  lamp  burns  dead  and  dim  ; 

But  Christabel  the  lamp  will  trim. 

She  trimmed  the  lamp  and  made  it  bright, 

And  left  it  swinging  to  and  fro, 

While  Geraldine,  in  wretched  plight, 

Sank  down  upon  the  floor  below." — Christabel. 

"  O  fair  is  Love's  first  hope  to  gentle  mind  ! 

As  Eve's  first  star  thro'  fleecy  cloudlet  peeping; 
And  sweeter  than  the  gentle  south-west  wind, 
O'er  willowy  meads  and  shadowed  waters  creeping, 
And  Ceres'  golden  fields  ;  the  sultry  hind 
teets  it  with  brow  uplift,  and  stays  his  reaping." 

— First  Advent  of  Love. 

7-  Seriousness  —  Self-reflection.  —  Coleridge  wrote 
concerning  his  own  abilities  and  convictions  as  follows : 
"  I  have  felt,  and  deeply,  that  the  poet's  high  functions  were 
not  my  proper  assignment ;  that  many  may  be  worthy  to 
listen  to  the  strains  of  Apollo,  of  the  sacred  choir,  and  be  able 
to  discriminate  and  feel  and  love  its  .genuine  harmonies,  yet 
not,  therefore,  called  to  receive  the  harp  into  their  own 
hands  and  to  join  the  concert.  .  .  .  From  my  childhood 
I  have  had  no  avarice,  no  ambition ;  my  very  vanity  in  my 
vainest  moods  was  nine-tenths  of  it  the  desire  and  delight  and 
necessity  of  loving  and  being  loved." 

"  Always  troubled  with  self-thought  in  the  midst  of  nature, 
philosophizing  about  himself  and  her,  moving  off  to  visit 
other  things  than  her,  the  poet  can  never  see  nature  exactly  as 
she  is. " — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  It  was,  perhaps,  no  more  than  a  question  of  the  state  of  his 
stomach  whether  his  assiduous  interest  in  himself  should  result 
in  intellectual  pride  or  in  self-abasement." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 


COLERIDGE  437 

"  In  Coleridge  we  feel  already  that  faintness  and  obscure 
dejection  which  clung  like  some  contagious  dampness  to  all  his 
work.  Wordsworth  was  to  be  distinguished  by  a  joyful  and 
penetrative  conviction  of  "the  existence  of  certain  latent  affin- 
ities between  nature  and  man  which  reciprocally  gild  the  mind 
and  nature  with  a  kind  of  heavenly  alchemy.  ...  In 
Coleridge's  sadder,  more  purely  intellectual  cast  of  genius 
what  with  Wordsworth  was  sentiment  or  instinct  became  a 
philosophical  idea  or  philosophical  formula,  developed,  as 
much  as  possible,  after  the  abstract  and  metaphysical  fashion 
of  the  transcendental  schools  of  Germany.  .  .  .  Perhaps 
the  chief  offence  in  Coleridge  is  an  excess  of  seriousness,  a 
seriousness  arising  not  from  any  moral  principle  but  from  a 
misconception  of  the  perfect  manner.  .  .  .  He  has,  too, 
his  passages  of  that  sort  of  impassioned  contemplation  on  the 
permanent  and  elementary  conditions  of  nature  and  humanity 
which  Wordsworth  held  to  be  the  essence  of  poetic  life. 
.  .  .  The  '  Lines  to  Joseph  Cottle '  have  the  same  philo- 
sophically imaginative  character." — Walter  Pater. 

"  Coleridge,  as  his  imaginative  impulse  flagged,  passed  into 
the  reflective  stage." — Leslie  Stephen. 

11  There  were,  perhaps,  in  Coleridge  some  special  powers  of 
fine  analysis  and  introvertive  speculation  which  seem  to  have 
predestined  him  for  other  work  than  poetry.  .  .  .  The 
poems  of  these  two  periods  are  few  altogether,  and  what  there 
are  are  more  meditative  than  formerly,  sometimes  even  hope- 
lessly dejected." — J.  C.  Shairp. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  hast  thou,  Man,  that  thou  dar'st  call  thine  own? 
What  is  there  in  thee,  Man,  that  can  be  known  ? 
Dark  fluxion,  all  unfixable  by  thought, 
A  phantom  dim  of  past  and  future  wrought, 
Vain  sister  of  the  worm — life,  death,  soul,  clod — 
Ignore  thyself,  and  strive  to  know  thy  God  !  " 

— Know  Thyself. 


43$  COLERIDGE 

"  My  God !  it  is  a  melancholy  thing 

For  such  a  man,  who  would  full  fain  preserve 
His  soul  in  calmness,  yet  perforce  must  feel 
For  all  his  human  brethren — O  my  God  ! 
It  weighs  upon  the  heart,  that  he  must  think 
What  uproar  and  what  strife  may  now  be  stirring 
This  way  or  that  way  o'er  these  silent  hills." 

— Fears  in  Solitude. 

"My  genial  spirits  fail  ; 
And  what  can  these  avail 

To  lift  the  smothering  weight  from  off  my  breast  ? 
It  were  a  vain  endeavor, 
Though  I  should  gaze  forever, 
On  that  green  light  that  lingers  in  the  west  : 
I  may  not  hope  from  outward  forms  to  win 
The  passion  and  the  life  whose  fountains  are  within." 

— Dejection  :  An  Ode. 

8.  Assimilation— Imitation.— "  It  is  remarkable  that 
a  poem  which  impresses  us  so  much  as  an  imaginative 
unity  .  .  .  should  in  great  part  have  been  a  compilation 
from  several  brains  and  books.  Young  Cruikshank,  a  neigh- 
bor of  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey,  had  dreamed  of  a  skeleton 
ship  worked  by  a  skeleton  crew,  and  this  was  the  starting-point 
of  the  whole.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  blessed  spirits 
who  bring  the  ship  to  harbor  came  from  one  of  the  epistles  of 
St.  Paulinus  of  Nola,  the  friend  of  St.  Ambrose.  The  crime 
of  the  old  Navigator  .  .  .  was  Wordsworth's  suggestion, 
derived  from  Shelvocke's  '  Voyage  around  the  World.'  Shel- 
vocke  describes  the  insupportable  cold  of  the  South  Atlantic 
Ocean  and  the  perpetual  squalls  of  sleet  and  snow." — Edward 
Dowden. 

"  Though  he  has  left  on  the  system  he  inculcated  such  traces 
of  himself  as  cannot  fail  to  be  left  by  any  mind  of  original 
power,  he  was  anticipated  in  all  the  essentials  of  his  doctrine 
by  the  great  Germans  of  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century,  and 


COLERIDGE  439 

was  accompanied  in  it  by  the  remarkable  series  of  their  French 
expositors  and  followers." — John  Stuart  Mill. 

"  The  '  Hymn  to  Chamouni  '  is  an  expansion  of  a  short 
poem  in  stanzas,  upon  the  same  subject,  by  Frederica  Brun,  a 
female  poet  of  Germany,  previously  known  to  the  world  under 
her  maiden  name  of  Mtinter.  The  mere  frame-work  of  the 
poem  is  exactly  the  same.  ...  In  '  France  '  a  fine  ex- 
pression or  two  are  from  <  Samson  Agonistes.' 

"  It  is  undeniable  that  Coleridge  was  guilty  of  a  serious 
theft  of  metaphysical  wares.  .  .  .  Coleridge  .  .  . 
persuaded  himself  that  he  had  really  anticipated  Schelling's 
thoughts  and  might  justifiably  appropriate  Schelling's  words." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  The  twelfth  chapter  of  his  '  Biographia  Literaria,'  which 
comes  nearer  than  any  other  of  his  writings  to  being  a  full 
statement  of  his  views,  is  indeed  little  more  than  a  translation 
from  Schelling."—  W.  M.  Rossetti. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  No  knell  that  tolled,  but  filled  my  anxious  eye, 
And  suffering  Nature  wept  that  one  should  die." 

—  To  a  Young  Lady. 

[Compare  Shelley's  "  Retrospect/'] 

•"  When,  insupportably  advancing, 

Her  arm  made  mockery  of  the  warrior's  tramp." 

— France. 

[Compare  "  Sampson  Agonistes."] 

[Compare,  also,  Coleridge's  "Song  of  the  Pixies"  with 
Milton's  "L' Allegro."] 

9.  Unevenness — Confusion. — "  His  good  work  is  the 
scantiest  ever  done  by  a  man  so  famous  in  so  long  a  life ;  and 
much  of  his  work  is  bad.  His  genius  is  fluctuant  and  moon- 
struck as  the  sea  is.  ...  Among  all  verses  of  boys  who 


440  COLERIDGE 

were  to  grow  up  to  be  great,  I  remember  none  so  perfect,  so 
sweet  and  deep  in  sense  and  sound  as  those  which  he  is  said 
to  have  written  at  school,  headed  '  Time,  Real  and  Imagi- 
nary ;  '  and  following  hard  on  these  come  a  score  or  two  of 
poems  each  more  feeble  and  flatulent  than  the  last.  [See,  for 
illustration,  his  '  Lines  to  a  Young  Ass.']  His  genius  walked 
for  some  time  over  much  waste  ground  with  irregular  and  un- 
sure steps.  Some  poems,  touched  with  exquisite  grace,  with 
clear  and  pure  harmony,  are  tainted  with  somewhat  of  feeble 
and  sickly,  which  impairs  our  relish.  .  .  .  His  political 
verse  is  most  often  weak  of  foot  and  hoarse  of  accent.  He  is 
like  the  legendary  footless  bird  of  Paradise.  .  .  .  Had 
his  wings  always  held  out,  it  had  been  well  for  him  and  us. 
Unhappily,  this  footless  creature  would  perforce  too  often  furl 
his  wings  in  mid  air  and  try  his  footing  on  earth,  where  his 
gait  was  like  a  swan's  on  shore.  .  .  .  Compare  the  nerve- 
less and  hysterical  verses  headed  <  Fears  in  Solitude  '  with  the 
majestic  and  masculine  sonnet  of  Wordsworth  written  at  the 
same  time  on  the  same  subject.  The  lesser  poet  [Words- 
worth] speaks  with  a  calm  force  of  thought  and  resolution  ; 
Coleridge  wails,  appeals,  deprecates,  objurgates  in  a  flaccid  and 
querulous  fashion  without  heart  or  spirit." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"To  many  people  Coleridge  seemed  to  wander:  and  he 
seemed  then  to  wander  most  when  the  compass  and  huge  cir- 
cuit in  which  his  illustrations  moved  travelled  farthest  into 
remote  regions  before  they  began  to  revolve.  Long  before 
this  coming  around  commenced  most  people  had  lost  him  and 
naturally  enough  supposed  he  had  lost  himself.  .  .  .  How- 
ever, I  can  assert,  from  my  long  and  intimate  knowledge  of 
Coleridge's  mind,  that  logic  the  most  severe  was  as  inalienable 
from  his  modes  of  thought  as  grammar  was  from  his  language." 
— De  Quincey. 

11  If  anything  imparts  unity  to  his  marred  life,  now  soaring 
high  or  diving  deep,  now  trailing  in  the  dust  with  broken 
wing,  it  is  this,  that  alike  in  the  glory  of  his  youth  and  the 


COLERIDGE  441 

dawn  of  his  genius,  in  the  infirmity  and  conscious  self-degre- 
dation  of  his  manhood,  and  amid  the  lassitude  and  languor  of 
his  latest  days,  he  was  always  one  who  loved  the  light  and 
grew  toward  it." — Edward  Dow  den. 

"  Coleridge's  creative  mood  was  as  brief  as  it  was  enrapt- 
uring. From  his  twenty-sixth  to  his  twenty-eighth  year  he 
blazed  out  like  Tycho  Brahe's  star,  then  sank  his  light  in 
metaphysics,  exhibiting  little  thenceforth  of  worth  to  lit- 
erature except  a  criticism  of  poets  and  dramatists." — E.  C. 
Stedman. 

"  Musical  are  many  of  the  periods,  beautiful  the  images, 
and  here  and  there  comes  a  single  idea  of  striking  value ;  but 
for  these  we  are  obliged  to  hear  many  discursive  exordiums, 
irrelevant  episodes,  and  random  speculations." — If.  T. 
Tucker  man. 

"Nothing  gave  his  will  force  but  high-pitched  enthusiasm, 
and  with  its  death  the  enduring  energy  of  life  visited  him  no 
more.  .  .  .  The  weakness  of  his  will  was  doubled  by 
disease  and  trebled  by  opium.  .  .  .  There  is  no  lesson 
so  solemn  in  the  whole  range  of  modern  poetry — genius  with- 
out will — religion  without  strength — hope  without  persever- 
ance— art  without  the  power  of  finish.  .  .  .  The  volume 
we  have  from  him  influences  us  with  all  the  sadness  that  a 
garden  does  in  which  two  or  three  plants  rise  and  flower  per- 
fectly, but  in  which  the  rest  are  choked  with  weeds  or  run  to 
seed." — Stop  ford  Brooke. 

"  Strong  as  is  his  pinion,  his  flight  seems  to  resemble  rather 
that  of  the  eaglet  than  of  the  full-grown  eagle,  even  to  the 
last."—  H.  D.  Traill. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  This  day  among  the  faithful  placed 

And  fed  with  fontal  manna  ; 
O  with  maternal  title  graced, 
Dear  Anna's  dearest  Anna  ! 


442  COLERIDGE 

"  While  others  wish  thee  wise  and  fair, 

A  maid  of  spotless  fame, 
I'll  breathe  this  more  compendious  prayer — 
May'st  thou  deserve  thy  name  ! 

"  So,  when  her  tale  of  days  all  flown, 

Thy  mother  shall  be  missed  here  ; 
When  Heaven  at  length  shall  claim  its  own 
And  angels  snatch  their  sister." 

— On  the  Christening  of  a  Friend's  Child. 

"  Why  need  I  say,  Louisa  dear ! 
How  glad  I  am  to  see  you  here, 

A  lovely  convalescent ; 
Risen  from  the  bed  of  pain  and  fear 
And  feverish  heat  incessant. 

"  The  sunny  showers,  the  dappled  sky, 
The  little  birds  that  warble  high, 

Their  vernal  loves  commencing, 
Will  better  welcome  you  than  I 

With  their  sweet  influencing. 

"  Believe  me,  while  in  bed  you  lay, 
Your  danger  taught  us  all  to  pray  : 

You  made  us  grow  devouter  ! 
Each  eye  looked  up  and  seemed  to  say, 
How  can  we  do  without  her." 

—  To  a  Young  Lady. 

"  Mark  this  holy  chapel  well ! 
The  birth-place,  this,  of  William  Tell. 
Here,  where  stands  God's  altar  dread, 
Stood  his  parent's  marriage-bed. 

"  Here,  first,  an  infant  to  her  breast, 
Him  his  loving  mother  prest ; 
And  kissed  the  babe,  and  blessed  the  day, 
And  prayed  as  mothers  used  to  pray. 


COLERIDGE  443 

"  To  Nature  and  to  Holy  Writ 
Alone  did  God  the  boy  commit : 

Where  flashed  and  roared  the  torrent,  oft 
His  soul  found  wings,  and  soared  aloft ! 

"  The  straining  oar  and  chamois  chase 

Had  formed  his  limbs  to  strength  and  grace  : 
On  wave  and  wind  the  boy  would  toss, 
Was  great,  nor  knew  how  great  he  was !  " 

—  Tell's  Birthplace. 

.  Abstraction— Obscurity— Lack  of  Logical  Se- 
quence.— "  His  intense  and  overwrought  abstraction,  that 
sensuous  fluctuation  of  soul,  that  floating  fervor  of  fancy, 
whence  his  poetry  rose  as  from  a  shifting  sea,  in  faultless  com- 
pletion of  form  and  charm,  had  absorbed — if  indeed  there 
were  any  to  absorb — all  emotion  of  love  or  faith,  all  heroic 
beauty  of  moral  passion,  all  inner  and  outer  life  of  the  only 
kind  possible  to  such  other  poets  as  Dante  or  Shelley,  Milton 
or  Hugo.  .  .  .  Want  of  self-command  left  him  often  to 
the  mercy  of  a  caprice  which  swept  him  through  tangled  and 
tortuous  ways  of  thought,  through  brakes  and  byways  of 
fancy,  where  the  solid  subject  in  hand  was  either  utterly  lost 
and  thrown  over,  or  so  transmuted  and  transfigured  that  any 
recognition  of  it  was  as  hopeless  as  any  profit.  ...  In 
an  essay  well  worth  translating  out  of  jargon  into  some  human 
language,  he  speaks  of  the  '  holy  jungle  of  human  metaphysics.' 
Out  of  that  holy  and  pestilential  jungle  he  emerged  but  too 
rarely  into  sunlight  and  clear  air." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  An  infirm  will,  a  dreamy  ideality,  a  preternatural  subtlety 
of  thought  and  intense  religious  susceptibility  were  thrown 
among  a  people  eminently  practical  and  prosaic,  impatient  of 
romance,  indifferent  to  intellectual  refinements,  strict  in  their 
moral  expectations,  scrupulous  of  the  veracities,  but  afraid  of 
the  fervors  of  devotion." — James  Martineau. 

"  We  see  no  sort  of  difference  between  his  published  and 


444  COLERIDGE 

his  unpublished  compositions.  It  is  just  as  impossible  to  get 
at  the  meaning  of  the  one  as  the  other.  .  .  .  Each  sev- 
eral work  exists  only  in  the  imagination  of  the  author,  and 
is  quite  inaccessible  to  the  understandings  of  his  readers. 

This  work  ["  The  Friend  "]  is  so  obscure  that  it  has 
been  supposed  to  be  written  in  cypher,  and  that  it  is  necessary 
to  read  it  upwards  and  downwards,  or  backwards  and  for- 
wards, as  it  happens,  to  make  head  or  tail  of  it.  ...  His 
talk  was  excellent  if  you  let  him  start  from  no  premises  and 
come  to  no  conclusion." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  You  could  not  call  this  aimless,  cloud-capt,  cloud-bound 
lawlessly  meandering  discourse  by  the  name  of  excellent  talk. 

The  moaning  sing-song  of  that  theosophico-meta- 
physicalo  monotony  left  you  at  last  with  a  very  dreary  feeling. 

Coleridge  talked  with  musical  energy  two  stricken 
hours,  his  face  radiant  and  moist,  and  communicated  no 
meaning  whatsoever  to  any  individual  of  his  hearers. 
You  swam  and  fluttered  on  in  the  mistiest  wide  unintelligible 
deluge  of  things,  for  the  most  part  in  a  rather  profitless, 
uncomfortable  manner."  —  Carlyle. 

"  He  considered  that  the  object  of  poetry  was  to  excite 
subtle  trains  of  imaginative  association  ;  but  he  was  not  satis- 
fied, like  Wordsworth,  with  simply  analyzing  the  impressions 
of  his  own  mind.  .  .  .  His  genius  was  of  far  too  weird 
and  romantic  an  order  to  succeed  in  romantic  poetry.  .  .  . 
I  think  it  is  evident  that  he  began  to  reason  on  the  subtle 
affinities  between  sound  and  sense  and  to  perceive  that  iso- 
lated romantic  images  might  be  so  linked  together  by  mere 
metrical  movement  as  to  produce  the  effect  of  unity  which  the 
mind  requires  in  an  ideal  creation.  .  .  .  He  resolved, 
in  fact,  deliberately,  to  compose  as  a  musician.  ...  So 
little  does  the  effect  of  Coleridge's  poetry  depend  on  the  log- 
ical sequence  of  ideas  that  of  his  four  really  characteristic 
poems  three  are  fragments  and  one  is  said  to  have  been  com- 
posed in  a  dream  ;  while  '  The  Ancient  Mariner  '  was  founded 


COLERIDGE  445 

on  the  dream  of  a  friend.  .  .  .  The  effect,  both  in  *  The 
Ancient  Mariner'  and  in  '  Christabel,'  is  produced  by  the 
combination  of  isolated,  weird,  and  romantic  images  in  a 
strange  elfin  metre.  .  .  .  His  love  of  metaphysics  in- 
duced him  to  believe  that  he  could  penetrate  behind  the  veil 
of  sense  and  establish  a  transcendental  basis  for  the  law  of  the 
association  of  ideas. ' ' —  W.  J.  Courthope. 

"  I  cannot  help  being  reminded  of  the  partiality  he  often 
betrays  for  clouds.  .  .  .  '  The  Ancient  Mariner  '  is  mar- 
vellous in  its  mastery  over  that  delightfully  fortuitous  incon- 
sequence that  is  the  adamantine  logic  of  dreamland." — 
Lowell. 

"  The  subtle-souled  psychologist." — Shelley. 

"  Even  '  Christabel '  is  a  figure  somewhat  too  faintly  drawn. 
All  his  other  imaginings  of  women  are  exquisite 
abstractions,  framed  of  purely  feminine  elements,  but  repre- 
senting woman  rather  than  being  themselves  veritable  women. 
.  .  .  In  Coleridge's  first  volume  of  verse  he  had  styled 
a  considerable  number  of  the  pieces  'Effusions.'  .  .  . 
The  poet,  in  these  effusions,  places  himself  in  some  environ- 
ment of  beauty,  submits  his  mind  to  the  suggestions  of  the 
time  and  place,  falls  as  it  were  of  free  will  into  a  reverie,  in 
which  the  thoughts  and  images  meander  stream-like  at  their 
own  pleasure,  or  rather  as  if  the  power  of  volition  were  sus- 
pended and  the  current  must  needs  follow  the  line  of  least 
resistance;  then,  as  if  by  good  luck,  comes  the  culmination 
of  some  soft  subsidence,  and  the  poem  ceases.  In  the  earlier 
odes  .  .  .  there  is  indeed  an  evolution,  but  it  proceeds 
sometimes  by  those  fits  and  starts  which  were  supposed  to 
prove  in  writers  of  the  ode  a  kind  of  Pindaric  excitement. 
.  .  .  The  sequences  of  thought  and  feeling  in  these  earlier 
poems  are  often  either  of  the  meditative-meandering  or  the 
spasmodic-passionate  kind." — Edward  Dowden. 

"The  restless  activity  of  Coleridge's  mind  in  chasing  ab- 
stract truths  and  burying  himself  in  the  dark  places  of  human 


446  COLERIDGE 

speculation  seemed  to  me,  in  a  great  measure,  an  attempt  to 
escape  out  of  his  own  personal  wretchedness." — De  Quincey. 
"  [He]  frequently  changed  his  mind,  and  .  .  .  cer- 
tainly appears  to  thinkers  of  a  different  order  to  add  obscur- 
ity even  to  subjects  which  are  necessarily  obscure." — Leslie 
Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  that  we  roam  unconscious,  or  with  hearts 
Unfeeling  of  our  universal  Sire, 
And  that  in  his  vast  family  no  Cain 
Injures  uninjured  (in  her  best-aimed  blow 
Victorious  murder  a  blind  suicide) 
Haply  for  this  some  younger  angel  now 
Looks  down  on  human  nature  :  and,  behold  ! 
A  sea  of  blood  bestrewed  with  wrecks,  where  mad 
Embattled  interests  on  each  other  rush 
With  unhelmed  rage  ! " — Religious  Musings. 

"  Verse,  a  Breeze  'mid  blossoms  straying, 
Where  HOPE  clung  feeding,  like  a  bee — 
Both  were  mine  !     Life  went  a  maying 
With  NATURE,  HOPE,  and  POESY, 

When  I  was  young  ! 

When  I  was  young  ?— Ah,  woeful  WHEN  ! 
Ah  for  the  Change  'twixt  Now  and  Then  ! 
This  breathing  House  not  built  with  hands, 
This  body  that  does  me  grievous  wrong, 
O'er  aery  Cliffs  and  glittering  Sands, 
How  lightly  then  it  flashed  along  : — 
Like  those  trim  skiffs,  unknown  of  yore, 
On  winding  Lakes  and  Rivers  wide, 
That  ask  no  aid  of  Sail  or  Oar, 
That  fear  no  spite  of  Wind  or  Tide  !  " 

—  Youth  and  Age. 

"  But  properties  are  God  :  the  naked  mass 
(If  mass  there  be,  fantastic  guest  or  ghost) 
Acts  only  by  its  inactivity. 


COLERIDGE  447 

Here  we  pause  humbly.     Others  boldlier  think 
That  as  one  body  seems  the  aggregate 
Of  atoms  numberless,  each  organized  ; 
So  by  a  strange  and  dim  similitude 
Infinite  myriads  of  self-conscious  minds 
Are  one  all-conscious  Spirit,  which  informs 
With  absolute  ubiquity  of  thought 
(His  one  eternal  self-affirming  act!) 
All  his  involved  Monads,  that  yet  seem 
With  various  province  and  apt  agency 
Each  to  pursue  its  own  self-centring  end." 

—  The  Destiny  of  Nations. 


12.  Erudition — Intellectuality. — Hazlitt,  who  hated 
Coleridge  as  a  politician  and  assailed  him  virulently,  de- 
clared, "  He  is  the  only  person  I  ever  knew  who  answered  to 
the  idea  of  a  man  of  genius.  .  .  .  His  mind  was  clothed 
with  wings,  and,  lifted  on  them,  he  raised  philosophy  to 
Heaven."  Dr.  Arnold  called  Coleridge  "more  of  a  great 
man  than  any  one  who  has  lived  within  the  four  seas  in  this 
generation." 

"  The  largest  and  most  spacious  intellect,  the  subtlest  and 
the  most  comprehensive,  that  has  yet  existed  among  men. 
.  .  .  He  spun  daily  and  at  all  hours,  for  mere  amusement 
of  his  own  activities  and  from  the  loom  of  his  own  magical 
brain,  theories  .  .  .  such  as  Schelling — no,  nor  any  Ger- 
man that  ever  breathed,  not  John  Paul — could  have  emulated 
in  his  dreams.  .  .  .  Coleridge  was  armed,  at  all  points, 
with  the  scholastic  erudition  which  bore  upon  all  questions 
that  could  arise  in  polemic  divinity." — De  Quincey. 
"  He  was  a  mighty  poet  and 

A  subtle-souled  psychologist ; 

All  things  he  seemed  to  understand, 

Of  old  or  new,  on  sea  or  land, 

Save  his  own  soul,  which  was  a  mist." 

— Charles  Lamb. 


44^  COLERIDGE 

"  All  other  men  whom  I  have  ever  known  are  mere  chil- 
dren to  him. "  — Southey. 

"  Bentham  excepted,  no  Englishman  of  recent  date  has  left 
his  impress  so  deeply  in  the  opinions  and  mental  tendencies 
of  those  among  us  who  attempt  to  enlighten  their  practice  by 
philosophical  meditation.  ...  No  one  has  done  more 
to  shape  the  opinions  of  those  among  England's  younger  men 
who  may  be  said  to  have  any  opinions  at  all.  ...  He 
has  been  the  great  awakener  in  this  country  of  the  spirit  of 
philosophy  within  the  bounds  of  traditional  opinion. 
These  two  [Bentham  and  Coleridge]  agreed  in  being  the  men 
who,  in  their  age  and  country,  did  most  to  enforce  by  precept 
and  example  the  necessity  of  a  philosophy.  They  agreed  in 
making  it  their  occupation  to  recall  opinions  to  first  prin- 
ciples. ' '  —John  Stuart  Mill. 

"  Coleridge's  thought  may  almost  be  said  to  be  as  wide 
as  life.  .  .  .  There  were  perhaps  .  .  .  some  special 
powers  of  fine  analysis  and  introvertive  speculation,  which 
seem  to  have  predestined  him  for  other  work  than  poet- 
ry. ...  Are  they  mistaken  who  see  in  the  unearthly 
weirdness  of  'The  Ancient  Mariner,'  and  the  mysterious 
witchery  of  '  Christabel '  those  very  mental  elements  in  solu- 
tion which,  condensed  and  turned  inward,  would  find  their 
most  congenial  place  in  'the  exhausting  atmosphere  of  tran- 
scendental ideas?  '  .  .  .  His  eye  flashed  with  a  lightning 
glance  from  the  most  abstract  truth  to  the  minutest  practi- 
cal detail  and  back  again  from  this  to  the  abstract  princi- 
ple. .  .  .  When  once  his  mental  powers  begin  to  work, 
their  movements  are  on  a  vastness  of  scale  and  with  a  many- 
sidedness  of  view,  which,  if  they  render  him  hard  to  follow, 
make  him  also  stimulative  and  suggestive  of  thought  beyond 
all  other  modern  writers.  .  .  .  His  mind  was  a  very 
treasure-house  of  ideas.  .  .  .  These  [Juvenile  Poems] 
mark,  perhaps,  the  tumult  of  his  thick-thronging  thoughts, 
struggling  to  utter  themselves  with  force  and  freshness,  yet 


COLERIDGE  449 


not  quite  disengaged  from  the  old  commonplaces  of  poetic 
diction,  '  eve's  dusky  car  '  and  such  like,  and  from  those 
frigid  personifications  of  abstract  qualities  in  which  the  former 
age  delighted."—/.  C.  Shairp. 

"  Since  Shakespeare  and  Milton  we  have  had  nothing  at 
all  comparable  to  him." — Walter  Savage  Landor. 

"  His  mind  is  learned  in  all  the  learning  of  the  Egyptians 
as  well  as  the  Greeks  and  Romans  ;  and  though  we  have 
heard  simpletons  say  that  he  knows  nothing  of  science,  we 
have  heard  him  in  Chemistry  puzzle  Sir  Humphry  Davy  and 
prove  to  his  own  satisfaction  that  Leibnitz  and  Newton, 
though  good  men,  were  but  indifferent  astronomers.  .  .  . 
If  there  be  any  man  of  great  and  original  genius  alive  at  this 
moment  in  Europe,  it  is  S.  T.  Coleridge.  .  .  .  His  is  one 
of  the  most  deeply  musing  spirits  that  ever  breathed  forth  its 
influence  in  the  majestic  language  of  England." — Professor 
Wilson  [Christopher  North]. 

"  Instead,  like  Wordsworth,  of  seeking  the  sources  of  sub- 
limity in  the  simplest  elements  of  humanity,  he  ranges  through 
all  history  and  science,  investigating  all  that  has  really  exist- 
ed and  all  that  has  had  foundation  only  in  the  wildest  and 
strangest  minds.  .  .  .  The  term  '  myriad-minded,'  which 
he  has  happily  applied  to  Shakespeare,  is  truly  descriptive  of 
himself.  .  .  .  The  riches  of  his  mind  were  developed 
not  in  writing  but  in  his  speech — conversation  I  can  scarcely 
call  it — which  no  one  who  once  heard  can  ever  forget.  Un- 
able to  work  in  solitude,  he  sought  the  gentle  stimulus  of 
social  admiration,  and  under  its  influence  poured  forth  with- 
out stint  the  marvellous  resources  of  a  mind  rich  in  the  spoils 
of  time — richer  far  in  its  own  glorious  imagination  and  deli- 
cate fancy."— T:  N.  Talfourd. 

"  1  have  known  many  men  who  have  done  wonderful  things, 
but  the  most  wonderful  man  I  ever  knew  was  Coleridge." — 
Wordsworth. 

"  Thus  each  thought  that  was  to  have  been  only  one 
29 


450  COLERIDGE 

thought,  and  to  have  transmitted  the  reader's  mind  im- 
mediately forward,  becomes  an  exceeding  complex  combina- 
tion of  thought,  almost  a  dissertation  in  miniature,  and  thus 
our  journey  to  the  assigned  end  (if,  indeed,  we  are  carried  so 
far,  which  is  not  always  the  case)  becomes  nothing  less  than 
a  visit  of  inspection  to  every  garden,  manufactory,  museum, 
and  antiquity  situated  near  the  road  throughout  its  whole 
length.  .  .  .  Or  if  we  might  compare  the  series  of  ideas 
in  a  composition  to  a  military  line,  we  should  say  that  many 
of  the  author's  images  are  supernumerarily  attended  by  so 
many  related  but  secondary  and  subordinate  ideas,  that  the 
array  of  thought  has  some  resemblance  to  what  that  military 
line  would  be  if  many  of  the  men,  veritable  and  brave  sol- 
diers, stood  in  the  ranks  surrounded  by  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren. .  .  .  His  are  the  most  extraordinary  faculties  I 
have  ever  yet  seen  resident  in  a  form  of  flesh  and  blood." 
— -John  Forster. 

"  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  was  like  the  Rhine,  '  that  ex- 
ulting and  abounding  river;  '  he  was  full  of  words,  full  of 
thoughts ;  yielding  both  in  an  unfailing  flow  that  delighted 
many  and  perplexed  a  few  of  his  hearers.  He  was  a  man  of 
prodigious  and  miscellaneous  reading,  always  willing  to  com- 
municate all  he  knew.  .  .  .  From  Alpha  to  Omega  all 
was  familjar  to  him.  .  .  .  He  went  from  flower  to  flower 
throughout  the  whole  garden  of  learning,  like  the  butterfly  or 
the  bee — most  like  the  bee.  .  .  .  He  was  so  full  of  in- 
formation that  it  was  a  relief  to  him  to  part  with  some  of  it 
to  others.  ...  I  imagine  that  no  man  had  ever  read  so 
many  books  and  at  the  same  time  had  digested  so  much." 
— B.  W.  Procter. 

"  The  ardor,  delicacy,  energy  of  his  intellect,  his  resolute 
desire  to  get  at  the  roots  of  things  and  deeper  yet,  if  deeper 
might  be,  will  always  enchant  and  attract  all  spirits  of  like 
mould  and  temper." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  The  molten  material  of  his  mind,  too  abundant  for  the 


COLERIDGE  451 

capacity  of  the  mould,  overflowed  it  in  fiery  gushes  of  fiery 
excess.  .  .  .  They  [his  associates]  all  thought  of  him 
what  Scott  said  of  him,  '  No  man  has  all  the  resources  of 
poetry  in  such  profusion.'  " — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATION. 

"  As  ere  from  Lieule-Oaive's  vapory  head 
The  Laplander  beholds  the  far-off  sun 
Dart  his  slant  beam  on  unobeying  snows, 
While  yet  the  stern  and  solitary  night 
Brooks  no  alternate  sway,  the  Boreal  Morn 
With  mimic  lustre  substitutes  its  gleam, 
Guiding  his  course  or  by  Niemi  lake 
Or  Balda  Zhiok,  or  the  mossy  stone 
Of  Solfar-kapper,  while  the  snowy  blast 
Drifts  arrowy  by,  or  eddies  round  his  sledge, 
Making  the  poor  babe  at  its  mother's  back 
Scream  in  its  scanty  cradle  :  he  the  while 
Wins  gentle  solace  as  with  upward  eye 
He  marks  the  streamy  banners  of  the  North, 
Thinking  himself  those  happy  spirits  shall  join 
Who  there  in  floating  robes  of  rosy  light 
Dance  sportively." — The  Destiny  of  Nations. 


WORDSWORTH,  1770-1850 

Biographical  Outline. — William  Wordsworth,  born  at 
Cockermouth,  England,  April  7,  1770;  father  an  attorney 
and  agent  to  Sir  James  Lowther,  afterward  Lord  Lonsdale ; 
mother  the  daughter  of  a  mercer  of  Westmoreland  ;  Words- 
worth's boyhood  is  passed  partly  at  Cockermouth  and  partly 
with  his  mother's  parents  at  Penrith ;  he  records  of  himself 
that,  as  a  child,  he  was  of ' '  a  stiff,  moody,  and  violent  temper, ' ' 
and  that  he  once  seriously  contemplated  suicide  on  being 
checked  for  some  boyish  error ;  during  his  early  boyhood  he 
read  "all  of  Fielding's  works,  «  Don  Quixote,'  'Gil  Bias,' 
and  any  part  of  Swift  that  I  liked — '  Gulliver's  Travels  '  and 
'  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  '  being  both  much  to  my  taste  ;  "  in  his 
ninth  year  Wordsworth  is  sent  to  a  school  at  Hawkshead ;  his 
first  verses  are  written  as  school  task- work,  and  are  entitled 
"Summer  Vacation;"  to  these  he  adds  voluntarily  other 
verses  on  "  The  Return  to  School ;  "  in  his  fifteenth  year  he 
wins  the  admiration  of  his  fellow-pupils  by  writing  verses  in 
honor  of  the  second  centenary  of  the  Hawkshead  school, 
which  was  founded  in  1585  by x Archbishop  Sandys;  Words- 
worth afterward  called  these  youthful  verses  "  a  tame  imitation 
of  Pope's  versification  and  a  little  in  his  style;  "  during  his 
school-days  he  is  profoundly  impressed  by  the  majestic  scenery 
about  him  in  the  vicinity  of  Hawkshead  ;  after  his  father's 
death,  in  1783,  Wordsworth  is  placed  under  the  care  of  two 
uncles,  who  enable  him  to  continue  his  education  ;  an  estate 
of  ^5,000,  which  belonged  to  his  father,  had  been  seized  by 
Lord  Lonsdale,  and  it  was  not  till  that  nobleman's  death,  in 
1 80 1,  after  most  of  the  remaining  fortune  of  the  family  had 
been  spent  in  litigation  over  the  matter,  that  it  was  recovered ; 

452 


WORDSWORTH  453 

meantime  the  poet's  uncles  recognize  the  talent  of  the  young 
man  and  his  brother  Christopher  (afterward  master  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge),  and  give  to  each  a  course  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge. 

Wordsworth  enters  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in  Oc- 
tober, 1787,  thus  becoming  a  successor  of  Spenser,  Dryden, 
Ben  Jonson,  Milton,  and  Gray,  and  a  predecessor  of  Carlyle 
and  Byron — all  Cambridge  men  ;  the  tranquil  atmosphere 
and  the  noble  associations  of  Cambridge  deeply  affect  the 
young  poet;  he  spends  his  first  long  college  vacation  at 
Hawkshead,  where  he  develops  "  a  somewhat  closer  interest  in 
the  joys  and  sorrows  of  the  villagers  ;  "  his  second  long  vaca- 
tion is  spent  at  Penrith  with  that  sister  who  was  to  be  his  life- 
long companion,  critic,  and  friend  ;  his  third  college  summer 
is  spent  with  his  friend  Jones  in  a  walking  tour  through 
Switzerland — an  experience  narrated  later  in  his  "  Prelude" 
and  then  as  rare  as  it  is  now  common  among  young  collegians; 
he  is  graduated,  B.A.,  from  Cambridge  in  June,  1791,  and 
leaves  the  university  with  no  fixed  plans  for  the  future ;  he  first 
goes  to  London,  and  spends  some  time  in  walking  about  the 
streets  of  the  metropolis,  studying  the  types  of  humanity  found 
there;  from  this  London  sojourn  result  the  "  Reverie  of  Poor 
Susan"  and  the  ''Sonnet  on  Westminster  Bridge;"  in  No- 
vember, 1791,  Wordsworth  lands  in  France,  passes  through 
Paris  (then  in  the  throes  of  the  French  Revolution),  and 
settles  at  Orleans  to  study  the  French  language ;  he  spends 
nearly  a  year  at  Orleans  and  at  Blois  ;  he  returns  as  far  as  Paris 
in  October,  1792,  and  thinks  seriously  of  entering  the  struggle 
as  a  leader  of  the  Girondists,  but  his  uncles  compel  him,  by 
stopping  his  supply  of  funds,  to  return  to  England  late  in 
1792  ;  during  1792  he  publishes  two  poems,  ''The  Evening 
Walk"  and  "Descriptive  Essays,"  and  thus  attracts  the  atten- 
tion of  Coleridge,  though  the  poems  are  not  otherwise  noticed; 
being  at  heart  a  democrat,  Wordsworth  is  seriously  disturbed 
when  England  declares  war  against  the  French  republic ;  in 


454  WORDSWORTH 

1795  his  gifted  sister  becomes  his  permanent  companion,  and 
the  poet  finds  in  her  society  much  solace ;  during  this  year, 
on  the  death  of  Raisley  Calvert,  a  friend  whom  Wordsworth 
had  tenderly  nursed  while  he  was  dying  of  consumption,  the 
poet  receives  a  bequest  of  ^900. 

In  the  autumn  of  1795  he  settles  with  his  sister  in  a  snug 
cottage  at  Racedown,  near  Crewkerne,  in  Dorsetshire ;  he 
records  afterward  that  he  and  his  sister  lived  for  seven  or  eight 
years  on  the  interest  of  the  ^900  plus  a  legacy  of  ^"100  that 
his  sister  had  received  and  about  ^100  that  he  had  received 
from  his  "Lyrical  Ballads  ;  "  while  at  Racedown  Wordsworth 
completes  his  "  Guilt  and  Sorrow,"  and  writes  his  tragedy, 
"  The  Borderers  "  and  also  "The  Ruined  Cottage,"  afterward 
embodied  in  the  "Excursion;"  the  poem  last  named  is 
warmly  praised  by  Coleridge,  who  visits  the  Wordsworths  at 
Racedown  in  June,  1797;  in  July,  1797,  they  remove  to 
Alfoxden,  a  large  house  in  Somersetshire,  near  Netherstowey, 
where  Coleridge  was  then  living ;  here  Wordsworth  increases 
his  income  by  taking  as  a  pupil  a  young  son  of  Basil  Montagu, 
and  here  he  writes  many  of  his  shorter  poems;  during  a  brief 
excursion  among  the  Cumberland  hills,  in  the  autumn  of  1797, 
Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  his  sister  collaborate  in  planning 
"The  Ancient  Mariner,"  which  Coleridge  afterward  puts  into 
form;  Wordsworth  is  said  to  have  suggested  the  well-known 
incident  of  the  albatross  and  the  navigation  of  the  ship  by  dead 
men ;  in  the  autumn  of  1 797  was  published  the  volume  of  poems 
by  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  called  "Lyrical  Ballads;" 
besides  the  trivial  poems  of  Wordsworth  that  have  been  so 
severely  and  justly  criticised,  this  volume  contained  "Lines 
Written  above  Tintern  Abbey,"  a  poem  written  at  Tin  tern 
Abbey  in  a  single  day  during  1798,  and  now  generally  rec- 
ognized as  the  author's  greatest  short  poem. 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads" 
Wordsworth  and  his  sister  sail  for  Germany,  and  spend  four 
months  at  Goslar,  near  the  Hartz  forest,  for  the  purpose  of 


WORDSWORTH  455 

perfecting  themselves  in  the  knowledge  of  the  German  lan- 
guage; while  at  Goslar  Wordsworth  writes  "Lucy  Gray," 
".Ruth,"  "  Nutting,"  "  The  Poet's  Epitaph,"  and  others  of 
his  best  short  poems ;  on  the  day  when  he  leaves  Goslar  he 
begins  a  long  poem  describing  the  development  of  his  own 
mind,  addressed  to  Coleridge  and  written  as  a  confidential 
communication  between  intimate  friends  ;  this  poem  was  not 
published  till  after  Wordsworth's  death,  when  his  wife  named 
it  "  The  Prelude ;  "  he  finishes  "  The  Prelude"  in  .1805,  and 
designs  it  as  an  introduction  to  a  projected  poem  to  be  called 
"The  Recluse,"  of  which  only  the  second  division — "The 
Excursion" — has  ever  been  published,  though  Wordsworth 
wrote  one  book  of  the  first  part ;  the  material  gathered  for  the 
third  part  of  "  The  Recluse  "  was  afterward  incorporated  into 
the  poet's  other  works ;  returning  to  the  Lake  country  in  the 
spring  of  1799,  he  becomes  remarkably  familiar  with  the  dis- 
trict and  its  people;  his  biographer  asserts  that  "  there  was 
scarcely  a  mile  of  territory  in  the  Lake  country  over  which  he 
had  not  wandered  ;  "  the  summits  of  Coniston  and  Esthwaite 
suggest  to  him  many  of  his  finest  poetic  flights,  but  the  lakes 
of  Grasmere  and  Rydal  form  the  centre  of  his  life  and  wander- 
ings ;  his  relation  to  the  Cumberland  scenery  appears  espe- 
cially in  his  "  Poems  on  the  Naming  of  Places  ;  "  two  of  the 
"  Evening  Voluntaries  "  were  composed  by  the  side  of  Rydal 
Mere,  and  "The  Wild  Duck's  Nest"  was  on  one  of  the 
Rydal  islands ;  soon  after  his  return  from  Germany  Words- 
worth settles,  with  his  sister,  at  Townend,  Grasmere ;  on  Octo- 
ber 4,  1802,  he  is  married  to  Miss  Mary  Hutchinson,  of  Pen- 
rith,  a  simple  village  maiden  without  the  advantages  of  the 
schools,  but  herself  a  true  poet  in  feeling  and  expression  ; 
Wordsworth  records  that  his  wife  was  the  author  of  the  two 
following  lines  of  "  The  Daffodils  :  " 

"  They  flash  upon  that  inward  eye 
That  is  the  bliss  of  solitude." 


456  WORDSWORTH 

The  life  of  the  Wordsworths  at  Townend  is  even  less  luxuri- 
ous than  that  of  the  peasants  about  them,  and  fully  illustrates 
"  plain  living  and  high  thinking;  "  they  have  "  a  boat  upon 
the  lake  and  a  small  orchard  and  smaller  garden,"  but  their 
parlor  is  floored  with  stone,  and  their  only  servant  an  old  woman 
of  sixty  ;  here  Wordsworth  continues  his  intimacy  with  Cole- 
ridge, and  the  latter  poet,  with  his  family,  is  often  a  member 
of  Wordsworth's  household  for  months  together  ;  during  1802 
Wordsworth  writes  "  The  Daffodils"  and  the  sonnets  on 
"  Westminster  Bridge"  and  "Calais  Sands;"  in  1803  he 
makes  a  tour  through  Scotland  with  his  sister,  and  writes  "The 
Highland  Girl ;  "  during  the  same  year  he  forms  a  friendship 
with  Sir  George  Beaumont,  a  wealthy  nobleman  of  Essex,  and 
Beaumont  presents  him  with  "  a  beautiful  piece  of  land  "  at 
Applethwaite  under  Skiddaw,  hoping  thus  to  induce  Words- 
worth to  settle  there  near  their  mutual  friend  Coleridge ;  this 
friendship  of  Wordsworth  with  Beaumont,  who  was  himself  a 
poet  and  a  landscape-painter,  lasted  till  that  nobleman's  death 
in  1827,  and  the  intercourse  was  of  much  service  to  Words- 
worth in  developing  his  appreciation  of  art.  During  the  year 
1800  the  poet's  brother  John,  captain  of  an  East  Indiaman, 
had  spent  eight  months  with  him  at  Grasmere,  and  the  two 
brothers  had  become  deeply  attached  to  each  other  after  years 
of  separation  ;  the  drowning  of  this  brother,  with  all  on  board 
his  ship,  in  1805,  and  the  loss  of  two  children  in  1812,  tend  to 
sadden  the  later  years  and  later  poetry  of  Wordsworth ;  five 
children  in  all  were  born  to  him  in  Grasmere  ;  in  the  spring 
of  1808  he  removes  to  a  larger  house  called  Allan  Bank  at  the 
north  end  of  Grasmere,  and  thence,  in  1811,  to  the  Parsonage 
at  Grasmere  ;  his  poem  "  The  Triad  "  describes  his  daughter 
Dora,  while  his  other  daughter,  Catherine,  is  described  in  sev- 
eral of  his  sonnets  ;  his  passionate  love  of  liberty  and  his  high 
sense  of  national  honor  appear  in  his  sonnets  dedicated  "To 
Liberty,"  written  from  1802  to  1816,  and  in  his  prose  tract 
on  "The  Convention  of  Cintra,"  written  in  1808. 


WORDSWORTH  457 

In  January,  1813,  the  Wordsworths  remove  to  their  perma- 
nent home  at  Rydal  Mount,  where  the  poet  remains  till  his 
death ;  about  this  time,  through  the  interest  of  Lord  Lons- 
dale,  Wordsworth  is  appointed  distributor  of  stamps  for  the 
county  of  Westmoreland,  and  to  this  office  is  added  soon  after- 
ward the  same  post  for  Cumberland  ;  he  enjoyed  the  revenue 
from  these  offices  till  1842,  when  it  was  transferred  to  his  son; 
later  Wordsworth  refused  an  offer  of  the  more  lucrative  office 
of  collector  of  the  port  at  Whitehaven,  refusing  to  "  exchange 
his  sabine  villa  for  a  load  of  care ;  "  among  his  near  neighbors 
at  Rydal  Mount  are  De  Quincey,  Southey,  Professor  Wilson 
("  Christopher  North"),  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby,  and  Hartley 
Coleridge,  and  he  is  much  in  their  society  ;  many  of  the  pas- 
sages in  Wordsworth's  poems  are  really  photographs  of  his 
neighbors,  and  "  The  Waggoner  "  is  a  picture  of  what  the  poet 
imagined  that  he  himself  might  have  been  under  like  circum- 
stances ;  although  his  poems  are  greeted  with  more  ridicule 
than  has  ever  been  given,  perhaps,  to  any  others,  Wordsworth 
never  loses  his  calm  assurance  and  his  confidence  in  the  supe- 
riority of  his  work  ;  while  this  mental  attitude  saves  him  from 
much  suffering,  it  prevents  that  improvement  which  he  might 
have  made  through  a  proper  recognition  of  the  value  of  honest 
criticism  on  his  work  ;  he  is  more  sensitive,  however,  to  the 
pecuniary  results  of  the  ridicule;  in  1820,  when  he  is  fifty 
years  old,  and  after  he  has  been  writing  for  twenty-five  years, 
he  confesses  :  "  The  whole  of  my  returns  from  my  writing 
trade  have  not  amounted  to  seven  score  pounds;"  "  The 
Excursion  "  appears  in  1814,  and  in  1815  Wordsworth  repub- 
lishes  his  minor  poems,  introducing  the  volume  with  a  preface 
and  a  supplementary  essay  on  the  theory  of  poetry — an  essay 
since  widely  known  and  highly  estimated. 

In  the  summer  of  1820,  with  his  wife  and  sister,  he  makes 
a  tour  of  France  and  Italy  ;  in  1823  he  travels  in  Holland,  and 
in  1824  in  North  Wales  ;  in  1828  he  is  in  Belgium  with  Cole- 
ridge, and  in  1829  in  Ireland  ;  in  1831  he  visits  Scott  at  Ab- 


458  WORDSWORTH 

botsford,  just  before  the  departure  of  the  great  novelist  for 
Italy  in  search  of  health;  during  this  visit  Scott  goes  with 
Wordsworth  to  Yarrow,  and  the  incident  gives  rise  to  the 
poem  "  Yarrow  Revisited  "  and  the  sonnet  beginning  "A 
trouble  not  of  clouds  nor  weeping  rain;  "  in  1833  Words- 
worth makes  another  tour  in  Scotland,  and  in  1837  a  longer 
one  through  Italy,  with  Crabbe  Robinson;  in  1842  he  pub- 
lishes "  Poems,  Chiefly  of  Early  and  Later  Years,"  including 
"  Ecclesiastical  Sketches,"  a  series  of  sonnets  begun  in  1821  ; 
the  impairment  of  his  sister's  mental  faculties,  his  own  severe 
illness  in  1832,  and  the  gradual  decline  in  the  mental  powers 
of  his  friend  Coleridge  sadden  the  poet's  last  years  ;  between 
1830  and  1840  he  "passes  from  the  apostle  of  a  clique  into 
the  most  illustrious  man  of  letters  in  England  ;  "  an  American 
edition  of  his  poems  appears  in  1837,  and  Oxford  confers  upon 
him  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  in  1839;  in  October,  1842,  he  is 
granted  an  annuity  of  ^300  from  the  civil  list  "  for  distin- 
guished literary  merit ;  "  on  the  death  of  Southey,  in  March, 
1843,  Wordsworth  is  offered  the  laureateship,  which  he  at  first 
declines  as  "imposing  duties  which  I  cannot  undertake;  " 
but,  on  being  assured  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain  that  the  nom- 
ination does  not  imply  the  imposition  of  any  duties,  but  is 
given  rather  as  "  that  tribute  of  respect  which  is  justly  due  to 
the  first  of  living  poets,"  he  accepts  the  laureateship,  and  "  fills 
the  office  for  seven  years  with  quiet  dignity ;  "  his  only  com- 
positions of  any  importance  after  becoming  laureate  are  his 
two  prose  letters  protesting  against  the  projected  Kendal  and 
Windermere  railway  through  the  Lake  District ;  he  never  re- 
covers from  the  shock  caused  by  the  death,  in  1847,  of  Dora, 
his  only  daughter  who  survived  childhood ;  he  dies  at  Rydal 
Mount,  April  23,  1850. 


WORDSWORTH  459 

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Hazlitt,  Wm.,  "The  Spirit  of  the  Age."  London,  1886,  Bell,  149-165. 
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112-152. 


460  WORDSWORTH 

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Mifflin  &  Co.,  270-323. 

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Brown  &  Co.,  v.  index. 

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1885,  Scribner,  2:  9-54. 

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Wilde,  Lady  J.  F.,  "  Men,  Women,  and  Books."  London,  1881,  Ward, 
Lock  &  Bowden,  247-260. 

Brimley,  G.,  "Essays."     London,  1882,  Macmillan,  102-184. 

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Bagehot,  W.,  "Literary  Studies."  Hartford,  1889,  Travellers'  Insur- 
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Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Democracy,"  etc.  Boston,  1891,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 
Co.,  98-115. 

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207-213. 

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millan, 193-221. 

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364-375,  and  394-434J  7:  169-173. 

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214-233. 

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WORDSWORTH  461 

* 
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93- 
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Stephen). 

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Quarterly  Review,  12  :   loo-ill  (C.  Lamb). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Severe  Simplicity. — "  Wordsworth's  true  simplicity, 
the  simplicity  which  was  the  natural  vehicle  of  his  grand  and 
solemn  thoughts,  the  simplicity  which  came  from  writing 
Hos,f  to  the  truth  nf  thing*?  irH  imH"C  the  wnrH  rfcf»  QH* 
of  the  thought  conceived,  cannot  be  too  much  commended. 
.  .  .  They  [the  poems]  combine  depth__of_  insight  with  a 
most  exquisite  simplicity  of  phrase.  .  .  .  Worldlings 
may  sneer  at  the  simplicity  of  some  of  his  delineations  of  rural 
life,  but  they  contain  descriptions  which  for  simplicity  and 
truth  ...  can  hardly  be  excelled." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


462  WORDSWORTH 

"  Our  language  owes  him  for  the  habitual  purity  and  absti- 
nence of  his  style,  and  we  who  speak  it  for  having  emboldened 
us  to  take  delight  in  simple  things  and  to  trust  ourselves  to 
our  own  instincts.  .  .  .  Wordsworth's  better  utterances 
have  the  bare  sincerity  .  .  .  that  belongs  to  the  grand 
simplicities  of  the  Bible.  .  .  .  Certainly  a  great  part  of 
him  will  perish,  but  because  too  easily  understood." — Lowell. 

"  He  chooses  low  and  rustic  life,  because  in  that  condition 
the  passions  of  men  are  incorporated  with  the  beautiful  and 
permanent  forms  of  nature.  .  .  .  He  has  a  predilection 
for  a  style  the  most  remote  from  the  false  and  showy  splen- 
dor which  he  wished  to  explode,  an  austere  purity  of  lan- 
guage, both  grammatically  and  logically.  .  .  .  No  other 
man  has  so  steadily  asserted  the  dignity  of  virtue  and  of  sim- 
plicity. ' ' — Coleridge. 

"  He  chooses  to  depict  people  of  humble  life  because,  being 
nearer  to  nature,  they  are  on  the  whole  more  impassioned." 
—  Walter  Pater. 

"  What  is  most  precious  in  our  common  human  nature 
seemed  to  him  to  be  whatever  is  most  simple,  primitive,  and 
permanent.  .  .  .  What  is  best  in  language  are  those  sim- 
ple, stirring,  and  living  forms  of  speech." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  No  poet  ever  drew  from  simpler  sources  than  Wordsworth, 
but  none  ever  made  so  much  out  of  so  little.  .  .  .  He 
can  deal  with  facts  only  when  they  are  simple  enough  to  em- 
body but  a  single  idea.  .  .  .  His  '  plain  imagination  and 
severe,'  as  he  himself  calls  it." — K.  H.  Hutton. 

"  There  is  in  them  [Wordsworth's  poems]  the  freshness, 
the  ethereality,  the  innocent  brightness  of  a  new-born  day. ' ' 
— /.  C.  Shairp. 

"  It  was  his  theory  of  poetic  diction  that  it  should  be  that 
which  men  commonly  use  when  in  rustic  life  they  express 
themselves  simply.  ...  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  ele- 
ment of  grandeur  of  style  flowed  largely  from  the  solemn  sim- 
plicity."— Stopjord  Brooke. 


WORDSWORTH  463 

"  The  result  [of  Wordsworth's  effort]  was  full  of  simplicity, 
sincerity,  beneficence.  .  .  .  His  purpose  was  to  bring 
men's  minds  back  to  simplicity  in  subject  and  language. 
.  .  .  The  simplicity  of  his  subjects  and  of  his  manner,  too, 
passes  into  triviality — the  simplicity  of  his  style  into  poverty. 
.  .  .  He  undertook  the  mission  of  rehabilitating  simplicity, 
as  well  in  tone  as  in  feeling.  .  .  .  Never  has  there  been 
expressed  as  a  whole  with  such  puissant  simplicity  .  .  . 
sentiments  which  Nature  awakes." — Edmond  Scherer. 

11  Wordsworth  owed  much  to  Burns  and  to  a  style  of  per- 
fect plainness.  .  .  .  He  can  and  will  treat  such  a  subject 
with  nothing  but  the  most  plain,  first-hand,  almost  austere 
naturalness. ' ' — Matthew  Arnold. 

"His  works  are  matchless  for  their  power  and  simplicity 
and  noble  beauty.     .     .     .     Wordsworth  has  a  fearless  reli- 
ance on  the  simple  forces  of  expression  in  contrast  to  the  more 
ornate  ones.     .     .     .     He  accepted  it  as  his  mission  to  openN. 
the  eyes  and  widen  the  thoughts  of  his  countrymen  and  to     \ 
teach  them  to  discern  in  the  humblest  and  most  unexpected 
forms  the  presence  of  what  was  kindred  to  what  they  had  long    / 
recognized  as  the  highest  and  greatest." — R.  W.  Church.  _^X 

"  There  is  no  studied  phrase -making,  no  falsetto,  .  .  . 
all  simple  and  pure  soul.  .  .  .  He  gladly  returns  to  the 
simple  produce  of  the  common  day.  .  .  .  Wordsworth 
used  the  language  of  common  life.  .  .  .  The  language  is 
so  clear  and  simple  that  a  child  may  understand  it,  yet  so  pure 
and  true  that  the  ripest  minds  can  hardly  fail  to  relish  it. 
.  .  .  His  is  a  style  of  beauty  which  is  most  adorned  by 
being  wholly  unadorned.  .  .  .  Strong  was  his  passion 
for  severe  purity  and  solidity  of  form." — H.  N.  Hudson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  From  his  sixth  year  the  boy  of  whom  I  speak 
In  summer  tended  cattle  on  the  hills  ; 
But  through  the  inclement  and  the  perilous  days 


464  WORDSWORTH 

Of  long-continuing  winter  he  repaired, 

Equipped  with  satchel,  to  a  school  that  stood 

Sole  building  on  a  mountain's  dreary  edge, 

Remote  from  view  of  city  spire  or  sound 

Of  minster  clock.     From  that  bleak  tenement 

He  many  an  evening  to  his  distant  home 

In  solitude  returning,  saw  the  hills 

Grow  larger  in  the  darkness  ;  all  alone, 

Beheld  the  stars  come  out  above  his  head, 

And  travelled  through  the  wood  with  no  one  near 

To  whom  he  might  confess  the  things  he  saw." 

— The  Excursion. 

"  The  dew  was  falling  fast,  the  stars  began  to  blink  ; 

I  heard  a  voice  ;  it  said,  '  Drink,  pretty  creature,  drink  ! ' 

And  looking  o'er  the  hedge,  before  me  I  espied 

A  snow-white  mountain  lamb  with  a  maiden  at  its  side. 

"  Nor  sheep  nor  kine  were  near  ;  the  lamb  was  all  alone, 
And  by  a  slender  cord  was  tethered  to  a  stone  ; 
With  one  knee  on  the  grass  did  the  little  maiden  kneel 
While  to  that  mountain-lamb  she  gave  its  evening  meal." 

—  The  Pet  Lamb. 

"  It  was  a  dreary  morning  when  the  wheels 
Rolled  over  a  wide  plain  o'erhung  with  clouds, 
And  nothing  cheered  our  way  till  first  we  saw 
The  long-roofed  chapel  of  King's  College  lift 
Turrets  and  pinnacles  in  answering  files, 
Extended  high  above  a  dusky  grove. 
Advancing,  we  espied  upon  the  road 
A  student  clothed  in  gown  and  tasselled  cap 
Striding  along  as  if  o'ertasked  by  Time, 
Or  covetous  of  exercise  and  air  ; 
He  passed — nor  was  I  master  of  my  eyes 
Till  he  was  left  an  arrow's  flight  behind. 
As  near  and  nearer  to  the  spot  we  drew, 
It  seemed  to  suck  us  in  with  an  eddy's  force." 

— Residence  at  Cambridge. 


WORDSWORTH  465 

Profound  Meditation — Contemplation. — "  The 

predominating  characteristic  of  Wordsworth's  mind  is  thought- 
fulness,  a  thoughtfulness  in  which  every  faculty  of  his  mind 
and  every  disposition  of  his  heart  meet  and  mingle  ;  and  the 
result  is  an  atmosphere  of  thought,  giving  a  soft  charm  to  all 
the  objects  it  surrounds  and  permeates.  .  .  .  The  most 
common  exercise  of  his  imagination  is  what  we  may  call  its 
meditative  action — its  still,  calm,  searching  insight  into  spir- 
itual truth  and  into  the  spirit  of  nature.  In  these,  analysis 
and  reflection  become  imaginative,  and  the  '  more  than  rea- 
soning mind '  of  the  poet  overleaps  the  bound  of  positive 
knowledge.  .  .  .  He  is  not,  in  this  meditative  mood,  a 
mere  moralizing  dreamer,  a  vague  and  puerile  rhapsodist,  as 
some  have  maliciously  asserted,  but  a  true  poetic  philosopher. 
The  intensity  with  which  Wordsworth  meditates  has 
done  much  to  give  him  a  reputation  as  a  reasoner. 
His  nature  is  rather  contemplative  than  impulsive." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"One  lesson,  if  men  must  have  lessons,  he  conveys  more 
clearly  than  all,  the  supreme  importance  of  contemplation  in 
the  conduct  of  life.  .  .  .  Contemplation,  impassioned 
contemplation — that  is  with  Wordsworth  the  end  in  itself,  the 
perfect  end.  .  .  .  And  the  meditative  poet  is,  in  reality, 
only  clearing  the  scene  for  the  exhibition  of  emotion." — 
Walter  Pater. 

11  Meditation  and  sympathy  were  the  two  main  strings  of 
his  serene  and  stormless  lyre.  ...  He  could  fill  his 
meditation  with  the  spirit  of  a  whole  people." — A.  C.  Swin- 
burne. 

"  His  imagination  is  most  active  when  it  is  pervaded  by 
a  calm  yet  intense  and  lofty  spirit  of  meditation. 
Meditation,  imagination,  and  description  bear  everywhere 
the  impress  of  his  own  individuality,  and  appear  to  be  the 
characteristics  of  his  poems.  .  .  .  He  is  not  merely  a 
melodious  writer  or  a  powerful  utterer  of  deep  emotion  but  a 
30 


466  WORDSWORTH 

true  philosopher.  .  .  .  Wordsworth's  meditations  upon 
flowers  or  animal  life  are  impressive  because  they  have 
been  touched  by  this  constant  sympathy.  ...  He 
finds  lonely  meditation  so  inspiring  that  he  is  too  indifferent 
to  the  troubles  of  less  clear-sighted  human  beings." — Leslie 
Stephen. 

"  Wordsworth's  poetry  is  great  in  thought.  .  .  .  He 
himself  has  told  us  that  his  paramount  aim  was  to  be  a  philo- 
sophic poet.  ...  He  was  a  man  of  high  philosophic 
thought  and  high  moral  purpose.  .  .  .  He  is  England's 
great  philosophic,  as  Shakespeare  is  her  great  dramatic,  and 
Milton  her  great  epic,  poet.  .  .  .  With  what  unpre- 
meditated grace  he  could  suggest  his  philosophy  in  connec- 
tion with  everyday  objects  !  ' ' — Aubrey  De  Vere. 

"  Though  his  poetry  reads  so  transcendental,  and  is  so 
meditative,  there  never  was  a  poet  who  was  so  little  of  a 
dreamer  as  Wordsworth.  .  .  .  He  uses  human  sorrow  as 
an  influence  to  stir  up  his  own  meditative  spirit.  .  .  . 
Contemplative  as  he  was,  his  mind  was  too  concentrated  and 
intense  for  general  truth.  .  .  .  The  ballads  are  not  under- 
stood unless  .  .  .  one  enters  into  the  contemplative  tone 
in  which  they  were  written." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"The  essence  of  Wordsworth's  mind  in  poetry  is  contem- 
plative imagination.  .  .  .  He  is  a  meditative  and  inten- 
sive poet — as  such  admirable,  perhaps  unequalled." — W.  M. 
Rossetti. 

"  He  is  first  and  foremost  a  philosophical  thinker;  a  man 
whose  intention  and  purpose  of  life  it  was  to  think  out  for 
himself,  faithfully  and  seriously,  the  questions  concerning 
'  Man  and  Nature  and  Human  Life.'  .  .  .  He  is  as  much 
in  earnest  as  a  prophet,  and  he  holds  himself  as  responsible 
for  obedience  to  its  [the  divine  voice's]  call  and  for  its  fulfil- 
ment as  a  prophet." — R.  W.  Church. 

"Wordsworth  was  encumbered,  as  it  were,  by  reflective- 
ness of  manner." — /.  C.  Shairp. 


WORDSWORTH  467 

"Few  have  ventured  to  send  into  the  world  essentially 
meditative  poems,  which  none  but  the  thoughtful  can  enjoy." 
—  T.N.  Talfourd. 

"He  is  given  to  meditation,  and  much  contemptuous  of 
the  unmeditative  world  and  its  noisy  nothingness." — Carlyle. 

"  Even  the  name  of  thinker  but  half  suits  him,  he  is  the 
contemplative  man." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  He  is  essentially  a  man  of  inner  feelings,  that  is,  en- 
grossed by  the  concerns  of  the  soul.  .  .  .  The  peace  was 
so  great  within  him  and  around  him  that  he  could  perceive 
the  imperceptible. ' ' — Taine. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Absence  and  death,  how  differ  they  ?  and  how 
Shall  I  admit  that  nothing  can  restore 
What  one  short  sigh  so  easily  removed  ? 
Death,  life,  and  sleep,  reality  and  thought — 
Assist  me,  God,  their  boundaries  to  know, 
O  teach  me  calm  submission  to  thy  will !  " 

— Maternal  Grief. 

"  Weak  is  the  will  of  man,  his  judgment  blind  ; 
Remembrance  persecutes,  and  Hope  betrays  ; 
Heavy  is  woe  ; — and  joy,  for  human-kind, 
A  mournful  thing,  so  transient  is  the  blaze ! 
Thus  might  he  paint  our  lot  of  mortal  days 
Who  wants  the  glorious  faculty  assigned 
To  elevate  the  more-than-reasoning  mind 
And  color  life's  dark  cloud  with  orient  rays. 
Imagination  is  that  sacred  power, 
Imagination  lofty  and  refined  : 
'Tis  hers  to  pluck  the  amaranthine  flower 
Of  faith,  and  round  the  sufferer's  temples  bind 
Wreaths  that  endure  affliction's  heaviest  shower, 
And  do  not  shrink  from  sorrow's  keenest  wind." 

— Sonnets. 


468  WORDSWORTH 

"  Yet  may  we  not  entirely  overlook 
The  pleasure  gathered  from  the  rudiments 
Of  geometric  science.     Though  advanced 
In  these  inquiries,  with  regret  I  speak, 
No  farther  than  the  threshold,  there  I  found 
Both  elevation  and  composed  delight : 
With  Indian  awe  and  wonder,  ignorance  pleased 
With  its  own  struggles,  did  I  meditate 
On  the  relation  those  abstractions  bear 
To  Nature's  laws,  and  by  what  process  led, 
Those  immaterial  agents  bow  their  heads 
Duly  to  serve  the  mind  of  earth-born  man  ; 
From  star  to  star,  from  sphere  to  kindred  sphere, 
From  system  on  to  system  without  end." 

—  The  Prelude. 

Love  of    Nature— Appreciative   Sympathy.— 

Wordsworth's  poetry  is  great  because  of  the  extraordinary 
power  with  which  Wordsworth  feels  the  joy  offered  to  us  in 
nature,  the  joy  offered  to  us  in  the  simple  elementary  affec- 
tions and  duties,  and  because  of  the  extraordinary  power  with 
which,  in  case  after  case,  he  shows  us  this  joy  and  renders  it  so 
as  to  make  us  share  it." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  It  certainly  was  a  great  advance  from  Pope  for  a  poet  to 
have  <  an  appetite  and  a  passion  '  for  external  nature.  .  .  . 
The  originality  of  the  'Lyrical  Ballads  '  consisted  not  so  much 
in  an  accurate  observation  of  Nature  as  in  an  absolute  com- 
munion with  her  and  an  interpretation  of  the  spirit  of  her 
forms.  .  .  .  We  have  here  that  spiritualization  of  nature, 
that  mysterious  sense  of  the  Being  pervading  the  whole  uni- 
verse of  matter  and  mind,  that  feeling  of  the  vital  connection 
between  all  the  various  forms  and  kinds  of  creation. 
Wordsworth's  nature  grew  to  its  spiritual  stature  by  placing 
his  mind  in  direct  contact  with  natural  objects,  passively  re- 
ceiving their  impressions  in  the  still  hours  of  contemplation, 
and  bringing  his  own  soul  into  such  sweet  relations  to  the 
soul  of  nature  as  to  'see  into  the  life  of  things.'  The  poet 


WORDSWORTH  469 

tells  us  that  the  forms  and  colors  of  nature  affected  his  youth 
with  '  dizzy  raptures  and  aching  joys  ' — that  they  were  to 
him  '  as  an  appetite,  and  haunted  him  like  a  passion.'  .  .  . 
It  is  by  the  exercise  of  this  power  [the  interpretative  instinct] 
that  he  spanned,  as  he  believed,  the  gulf — deep,  wide,  and 
bottomless  as  science  makes  it — which  separates  man  from 
Nature.  Nature's  forms  interpret  him  to  himself;  her  sym- 
bols express  his  subtlest  thoughts  ;  she  has  correspondences 
for  his  most  soaring  aspirations,  affinities  for  his  most  elevated 
moods,  answers  for  his  deepest  questionings.  She  explains  to 
him  his  own  significance,  and  as  with  arrowy  glance  he  passes 
from  grade  to  grade  among  the  forms  of  nature,  stripping 
from  each  its  accidents  till  his  eye  rests  on  its  essential  life, 
he  grasps  her  unity  in  the  midst  of  her  diversity ;  he  sees  in 
her  wruat,  from  analogy  to  himself,  he  calls  a  soul ;  he  receives 
mystic  hints  of  personality  ;  he  catches  flashes  from  a  living 
will  akin  to  his  own.  .  .  .  He  starts  from  the  instinctive 
feeling  of  childhood,  the  simple  gladness  mingled  with  vague 
fear  in  the  presence  of  Nature.  .  .  .  When  instinct  be- 
comes reason  and  impulse  principle,  when  the  relationship  is 
consciously  and  intellectually  realized,  when,  that  is,  Words- 
worth perceives  the  reciprocal  influence  which  he  and  Nature 
exercise  over  each  other,  these  unconscious  feelings  pass  into 
love."—  E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  The  ideal  light  which  Wordsworth  sheds  but  brings  out 
only  more  vividly  the  real  heart  of  Nature,  the  innermost  feel- 
ing which  is  really  there,  and  is  recognized  by  Wordsworth's 
eye  in  virtue  of  the  kinship  between  Nature  and  his  own 
soul.  .  .  .  He  was  baptized  with  an  effluence  from  on 
high,  consecrated  to  be  the  poet-priest  of  Nature's  mys- 
teries. .  .  .  Even  before  school-time  was  past,  Nature 
had  come  to  have  a  meaning  and  an  attraction  for  him.  .  .  . 
And  Wordsworth  alone,  adding  the  philosopher  to  the  poet, 
has  speculated  widely  and  deeply  on  the  relation  in  which 
Nature  stands  to  the  soul  of  man." — -J.  C.  Shairp. 


47O  WORDSWORTH 

"  He  is  not,  and  never  can  be,  the  world's  poet,  but  the 
poet  of  those  who  love  solitude  and  solitary  communion  with 
nature.  ...  In  Wordsworth's  love,  nature  is  not  second 
but  first;  the  poetic  rill  with  him  rises  in  the  mountains." 
— T.  N.  Talfourd. 

"  This  love  of  the  nature  to  which  he  belongs,  and  which 
is  in  him  the  fruit  of  wisdom  and  experience,  gives  to  all  of  his 
poetry  a  very  peculiar,  a  very  endearing,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  a  very  lofty  character.  ...  He  tunes  his  mind  to 
nature  almost  with  a  feeling  of  religious  obligation." — Pro- 
fessor  Wilson  [Christopher  North]. 

"  He  very  early  became  aware  of  that  sympathy  with  exter- 
nal nature  which  so  strongly  marked  his  writings.  .  .  . 
He  had  early  learned  to  watch  and  note  in  her  [Nature]  that 
to  which  other  eyes  were  blind." — R.  W.  Church. 

"  The  doctrine  of  the  love  of  nature  is  generally  regarded 
as  Wordsworth's  great  lesson  to  mankind.  .  .  .  There  is 
everywhere  the  sentiment  in  Wordsworth  inspired  by  his  be- 
loved hills.  .  .  .  It  is  not  so  much  the  love  of  nature 
pure  and  simple  as  of  nature  seen  through  the  deepest  human 
feeling." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Wordsworth's  feeling  for  pastoral  nature,  and  the  depths 
of  sentiment  which  he  can  deduce  from  such  scenes  and  the 
lessons  of  humanity  he  can  read  to  the  heart  of  man,  are  things 
in  themselves  for  all  time." — R.  H.  Home. 

11  Among  the  poets  who  have  helped  to  cultivate  this  de- 
light in  the  observation  of  natural  appearances  there  is  none 
that  deserves  to  be  ranked  before  Wordsworth." — David 
Masson. 

"  In  the  '  Lyrical  Ballads '  and  the  '  Excursion,'  Mr. 
Wordsworth  appeared  as  the  high-priest  of  a  worship  of  which 
nature  was  the  idol.  ...  No  poems  have  ever  indicated 
a  more  exquisite  perception  of  the  beauty  of  the  outer  world 
or  a  more  passionate  love  and  reverence  for  that  beauty." — 
Macaulay. 


WORDSWORTH  47 1 

"  He  shows  us,  as  no  other  man  has  done,  the  beauty,  the 
glory,  the  holiness  of  Nature.  ...  He  spiritualizes  for  us 
the  outer  world." — Coleridge. 

11  He  had  a  human-heartedness  about  the  love  he  bore  to 
objects.  ...  He  loved  rocks  and  brooks  as  one  angel 
might  love  another — warm  human  feelings  were  connected 
with  them." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

"  Wordsworth  is  as  much  ravished  at  the  sight  of  a  butter- 
cup at  his  feet  as  at  the  rainbow  on  the  horizon.  .  .  .  No 
poet  puts  the  reader  so  thoroughly  in  communion  with  nat- 
ure. .  .  .  He  is  the  poet  who  has  most  profoundly  felt 
and  most  powerfully  expressed  the  commerce  of  the  soul  with 
Nature. " — Edmond  Scherer. 

11  He  threw  himself  not  at  the  feet  of  Nature  but  straight- 
way and  right  tenderly  on  her  bosom." — Mrs.  Browning. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  saw  the  spring  return,  and  could  rejoice, 
In  common  with  the  children  of  her  love, 
Piping  on  boughs,  or  sporting  on  fresh  fields, 
Or  boldly  seeking  pleasure  nearer  heaven 
On  wings  that  navigate  cerulean  skies. 
So  neither  were  complacency  nor  peace 
Nor  tender  yearnings  wanting  for  my  good 
Through  these  distracted  times  ;  in  Nature  still 
Glorying,  I  found  a  counterpoise  in  her, 
Which,  when  the  spirit  of  evil  reached  its  height, 
Maintained  for  me  a  secret  happiness." — The  Prelude. 

"  Yes,  I  remember  when  the  changeful  earth 
And  twice  five  summers  on  my  mind  had  stamped 
The  faces  of  the  moving  year,  even  then 
I  held  unconscious  intercourse  with  beauty 
Old  as  creation,  drinking  in  a  pure 
Organic  pleasure  from  the  silver  wreaths 
Of  curling  mist,  or  from  the  level  plain 
Of  waters  colored  by  impending  clouds. 


4/2  WORDSWORTH 

Even  while  mine  eye  hath  moved  o'er  many  a  league 
Of  shining  water,  gathering  as  it  seemed 
Through  every  hair-breadth  in  that  field  of  light 
New  pleasure  like  a  bee  among  the  flowers." 

— The  Prelude. 

"  I  wandered  lonely  as  cloud 

That  floats  on  high  o'er  vales  and  hills, 
When  all  at  once  I  saw  a  crowd, 

A  host  of  golden  daffodils  ; 
Beside  the  lake,  beneath  the  trees, 
Fluttering  and  dancing  in  the  breeze. 

"  Continuous  as  the  stars  that  shine 

And  twinkle  on  the  milky  way, 
They  stretched  in  never-ending  line 

Along  the  margin  of  a  bay  : 
Ten  thousand  saw  I  at  a  glance, 
Tossing  their  heads  in  sprightly  dance. 

"  The  waves  beside  them  danced  ;  but  they 

Outdid  the  sparkling  waves  in  glee  : 
A  poet  could  not  be  but  gay 

In  such  a  jocund  company  : 
I  gazed — and  gazed — but  little  thought 
What  wealth  to  me  the  show  had  brought." 

)  i    9?     —The  Daffodils. 

4.  Self-Reflection— Self-Esteem.—"  He  early  con- 
ceived himself  to  be,  and  through  life  was  confirmed  by  cir- 
cumstances in  the  faith  that  he  was,  a  '  dedicated  spirit/  a 
state  of  mind  likely  to  further  an  intense  but  at  the  same  time 
one-sided  development  of  the  intellectual.  .  .  .  The  same 
mental  necessities  of  a  solitary  life  .  .  .  had  made  him 
also  studious  of  the  movements  of  his  own  mind  and  the  mu- 
tual interaction  and  dependence  of  the  external  and  the  inter- 
nal universe.  .  .  .  Wordsworth  had  that  self-trust  which 
in  the  man  of  genius  is  sublime  and  in  the  man  of  talent  in- 
sufferable. He  was  the  historian  of  Wordsworth- 


WORDSWORTH 


473 


shire.  .  .  .  Study  and  self-culture  did  much  for  him,  but 
they  never  quite  satisfied  him  that  he  was  capable  of  making 
a  mistake." — Lowell. 

"  Of  the  transcendent  unlimited  there  was  to  this  critic 
[Wordsworth]  probably  but  one  specimen  known — Words- 
worth himself." — David  Mas  son. 

"  None  of  all  the  great  poets  was  ever  so  persuaded  of  his 
capacity  to  understand  and  his  ability  to  explain  how  best 
work  was  done." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  In  Wordsworth  we  find  a  personal  and  a  patriotic  egoism, 
a  pompousness,  a  self-importance  in  dwelling  upon  details  that 
have  value  chiefly  for  the  poet." — John  Addington  Symonds. 

"  Wordsworth's  egoism  was  of  an  abstract  kind,  still  it  was 
inartistic,  a  Wordsworthian  form  of  effusiveness." — Edward 
Dow  den. 

"  He  had  undoubtedly  a  high  opinion  of  his  own  powers 
and  performances  ;  and  not  only  this  but  also  a  habit  of  self- 
study  and  self-concentration,  which  kept  him  talking  a  good 
deal  about  himself." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  Wordsworth  is  a  moral  critic  of  men  rather  than  a  de- 
lineator of  character.  When  he  takes  peddlers  and  potters  for 
heroes,  they  are  not  those  of  real  life,  but  peddlers  and  potters 
after  a  type  in  his  own  imagination.  And  even  then  they  have 
but  little  congruity  except  that  which  comes  from  the  didactic 
unity  of  their  acts  and  discourses.  Ever  aiming  at  man  in  the 
simplicity  of  his  nature,  all  that  can  be  said  of  his  characters 
is  that  they  are  not  men  but  man — man  after  Wordsworth's 
own  image." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"An  intense  intellectual  egotism  swallows  up  everything. 
All  other  interests  are  absorbed  in  the  deeper  inter- 
est of  his  own  thoughts,  and  find  the  same  level." — William 
Hazlitt. 

11  He    is    eminently    and    humanly    expansive, 
spreading  his  infinite  egotism  over  all  the  objects  of  his  con- 
templation . ' ' — Mrs.  Browning. 


474  WORDSWORTH 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When,  as  becomes  a  man  who  would  prepare 
For  such  an  arduous  work,  I  through  myself 
Make  rigorous  inquisition,  the  report 
Is  often  cheering ;  for  I  neither  seem 
To  lack  that  first  great  gift,  the  vital  soul, 
Nor  general  truths,  which  are  themselves  a  sort 
Of  elements  and  agents — under-powers, 
Subordinate  helpers  of  the  living  mind  : 
Nor  am  I  naked  of  external  things, 
Forms,  images,  nor  numerous  other  aids 
Of  less  regard,  though  won  perhaps  with  toil, 
And  needful  to  build  up  a  poet's  praise." 

—  The  Prelude. 

"  Still  glides  the  stream,  and  shall  forever  glide ; 
The  Form  remains,  the  Function  never  dies; 
While  we,  the  brave,  the  mighty,  and  the  wise, 
We  Men,  who  in  our  morn  of  youth  defied 
The  elements,  must  vanish  ;— be  it  so  ! 
Enough,  if  something  from  our  hands  have  power 
To  live,  and  act,  and  serve  the  future  hour  ; 
And  if,  as  toward  the  silent  tomb  we  go, 
Through  love,  through  hope,  and  faith's  transcendent  dower, 
We  feel  that  we  are  greater  than  we  know." — After-Thought. 

"  My  heart  leaps  up  when  I  behold 

A  rainbow  in  the  sky  : 
So  was  it  when  my  life  began  ; 
So  is  it  now  I  am  a  man  ; 
So  be  it  when  I  shall  grow  old, 

Or  let  me  die. 

The  Child  is  father  of  the  Man  ; 
And  I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 
Bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety." 

—  The  Rainbow. 

5.  Delicate  Sense  of  Sound.— "  Wordsworth  mastered 
the  secret  alphabet  by  which  man  converses  with  nature,  and 


WORDSWORTH  475 

to  his  soul  she  spoke  an  audible  language.  Indeed,  his  ear  was 
even  more  acute  than  his  mind's  eye;  and  no  poet  has  excelled 
him  in  the  subtle  perception  of  the  most  remote  relations  of 
tone." — Lowell. 

' '  Wordsworth  is  rather  a  listener  than  a  seer.  He  hears 
unearthly  tones  rather  than  sees  unearthly  shapes.  The  vague- 
ness and  indistinctness  of  the  impression  which  the  most 
beautiful  and  sublime  passages  of  his  works  leave  upon  the 
mind  is  similar  to  that  which  is  conveyed  by  the  most  ex- 
quisite music.  .  .  .  Few  have  exceeded  him  in  the 
exquisite  delicacy  of  his  sense  of  sound." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  With  him  metre  is  but  an  additional,  accessory  grace 
on  that  deeper  music  of  words  and  sounds.  .  .  .  Subtle 
and  sharp  as  he  is  in  the  outlining  of  visible  imagery,  he  is  the 
most  subtle  and  delicate  of  all  in  the  noting  of  sounds. 
This  placid  life  matured  in  him  an  unusual  innate 
sensibility  to  natural  sights  and  sounds.  .  .  .  That  he 
awakened  a  '  sort  of  thought  in  sense '  is  Shelley's  just  criti- 
cism.' '—  Walter  Pater. 

"He  has  vividly  acute  senses,  and  delights  in  the  mere 
physical  use  of  them.  .  .  .  The  sense  of  hearing  was  the 
finest,  a  biographer  states." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"The  music  of  some  few  almost  incomparable  passages 
seems  to  widen  and  deepen  the  capacity  of  the  sense  for  recep- 
tion of  the  sublimest  harmonies." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"These  verses  sustain  the  serious  thought  by  their  grave 
harmony,  as  a  motet  accompanies  meditation  or  prayer.  They 
resemble  the  grand  and  monotonous  music  of  the  organ." 
—  Taine. 

"  Considered  as  to  composition  merely,  they  [Words- 
worth's odes]  are  perfect;  the  music  flows  on  like  a  stream, 
or  rolls  like  a  river,  or  expands  like  the  sea,  according  as  the 
thought  is  beautiful  or  majestic  or  sublime. ' '  —  Professor 
Wilson  [Christopher  North]. 


476  WORDSWORTH 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  sun  has  long  been  set, 

The  stars  are  out  by  twos  and  threes, 

The  little  birds  are  piping  yet 

Among  the  bushes  and  the  trees  ; 

There's  a  cuckoo  and  one  or  two  thrushes, 

And  a  far-off  wind  that  rushes, 

And  a  sound  of  water  that  gushes  ; 

And  the  cuckoo's  sovereign  cry 

Fills  all  the  hollow  of  the  sky. 

Who  would  *  go  parading  ' 

In  London,  and  '  masquerading,' 

On  such  a  night  of  June 

With  that  beautiful  soft  half-moon, 

On  all  these  innocent  blisses  ? 

On  such  a  night  as  this  is  !  " — Impromptu. 

"  A  flock  of  sheep  that  leisurely  pass  by, 
One  after  one  ;  the  sound  of  rain  and  bees 
Murmuring  ;  the  fall  of  rivers,  winds,  and  seas, 
Smooth  fields,  white  sheets  of  water,  and  pure  sky  ; 
I  have  thought  of  all  by  turns,  and  yet  do  lie 
Sleepless  ;  and  soon  the  small  birds'  melodies 
Must  hear,  first  uttered  from  my  orchard  trees  ; 
And  the  first  cuckoo's  melancholy  cry." — To  Sleep. 

"  Behold  her,  single  in  the  field, 
Yon  solitary  Highland  lass  ! 
Reaping  and  singing  to  herself  ; 
Stop  here,  or  gently  pass  ! 
Alone  she  cuts  and  binds  the  grain 
And  sings  a  melancholy  strain. 
Oh  listen !  for  the  vale  profound 
Is  overflowing  with  the  sound. 

"  No  nightingale  did  ever  chaunt 
More  welcome  notes  to  weary  bands 
Of  travellers  in  some  shady  haunt 
Among  Arabian  sands  ; 


WORDSWORTH  4/7 

A  voice  so  thrilling  ne'er  was  heard 
In  spring-time  from  the  cuckoo  bird, 
Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides." 

—  The  Solitary  Reaper. 

6.  Moral  Elevation. — "  He  is  a  great  Christian  moral- 
ist and  teacher.  .  .  .  His  gravity  and  moral  aim  are  Mr. 
Wordsworth's  most  prevailing  characteristics.  .  .  .  Words- 
worth is  a  spiritual  singer,  a  high  religious  singer,  and  none 
the  less  holy  because  he  stands  firmly  still  to  reason  among 
the  tossing  of  the  censers." — R.  H.  Home. 

"  In  many  poems  we  find  the  poet  spiritualizing  the  familiar 
appearances  and  common  facts  of  earth.  .  .  .  The  Christian 
view  of  life  and  Nature  does  not  at  first  receive  the  promi- 
nence which  is  its  due.  But  under  the  pressure  of  sorrow  he 
more  and  more  turned  to  the  Christian  consolations.  .  .  . 
He  bids  his  sister  ...  to  look  for  no  consolation  from 
earthly  sources,  but  to  seek  it  in  that  purer  faith. 
The  sanctifying  effect  of  sorrow  on  the  heroine  is,  as  Words- 
worth himself  says,  the  point  on  which  the  whole  moral  inter- 
est of  the  poem  ['  Margaret ']  hinges.  .  .  .  The  heroine 
knows  that  her  duty  is  but  '  To  abide  the  shock,  and  finally 
secure  o'er  grief  and  pain  a  triumph  pure.'  " — J.  C.  Shairp. 

"  He  has  succeeded  in  combining  his  morality  with  more 
than  ordinary  beauty  of  poetical  form.  .  .  .  It  is  by 
obedience  to  the  stern  law-giver,  Duty,  that  flowers  gain  their 
fragrance  and  that  the  '  inmost  ancient  heavens  '  preserve  their 
freshness  and  strength.  .  .  .  Wordsworth's  favorite  les- 
son is  the  possibility  of  turning  grief  and  disappointment  to 
account.  ...  In  the  '  White  Doe  of  Rylstone '  every- 
thing succeeds  so  far  as  it  is  moral  and  spiritual." — Leslie 
Stephen. 

"Is  it  only  the  matter  of  the  universe  which  by  itself  is 
dead?  No,  he  answered.  Matter  is  animated  by  a  soul,  and 
it  is  this  soul  that  thrills  to  meet  me.  .  .  .  For  there  are 


478  WORDSWORTH 

times  when  the  sense  of  the  spiritual  life  in  Nature  becomes  so 
dominant  that  the  material  world  fades  away,  and  we  feel  as 
if  we  ourselves  were  pure  spirit.  .  .  .  What  is  it,  then,  to 
which  we  speak,  with  whom  we  have  communion  ?  Not 
with  Nature  .  .  .  but  with  the  spirit  of  the  God  who 
abides  as  Life  in  all.  All  this  may  not  be  theological,  but  it 
is  distinctly  religious.  .  .  .  The  religion  of  Wordsworth 
is  the  noblest  we  possess  in  our  poetry,  and  the  healthiest. 
...  It  is  God,  then,  who  unites  Nature  to  us  and  directs 
her  teaching,  it  is  his  life  acting  on  ours.  A  wonderful  pict- 
ure— this  young  and  solitary  creature  living  in  communion 
with  the  Being  of  the  World.  .  .  .  And  the  action  of 
all  in  Wordsworth's  deep  religion  was  to  lead  him,  at  last,  to 
reach  the  point  marked  out  for  him  by  God." — Stopford 
Brooke. 

"He  is  the  most  spiritual  and  the  most  spiritualizing  of 
all  English  poets."—  H.  N.  Hudson. 

"  It  [Wordsworth's  poetry]  could  have  arisen  from  no  mind 
in  which  moral  beauty  had  not  been  organized  into  moral 
character.  .  .  .  As  we  pause  thoughtfully  before  some 
of  the  majestic  fabrics  of  his  genius,  they  seem  to  wear  the 
look  of  eternity."—  E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  His  works  are  nothing  else  than  the  celebration  of  the 
mysteries  of  this  religion." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  Rare  peculiarities  of  character  assisted  him — his  keen 
spiritual  courage  and  his  stern  spiritual  frugality." — ft.  H. 
Hutton. 

"He  reads  the  poems  of  Wordsworth  without  understand- 
ing them  who  does  not  find  in  them  the  noblest  incentives  to 
faith  in  man  and  in  the  grandeur  of  his  destiny." — Lowell. 

"  In  his  eyes,  what  constitutes  our  worth  is  the  integrity  of 
our  conscience  ;  science  itself  is  only  profound  when  it  pene- 
trates moral  life." — Taine. 


WORDSWORTH  479 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Milton  !  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour  : 
England  hath  need  of  thee  :  she  is  a  fen 
Of  stagnant  waters  ;  altar,  sword,  and  pen, 
Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower, 
Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  dower 
Of  inward  happiness.     We  are  selfish  men  ; 
Oh,  raise  us  up,  return  to  us  again ! 
And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  power." 

—  To  Milton . 

"  Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  : 

The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 

And  cometh  from  afar  : 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home  : 
Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy ! 
Shadows  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy, 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows  ; 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy." — Ode  on  Immortality. 

"  Blest  statesman  he,  whose  mind's  unselfish  will 

Leaves  him  at  ease  among  grand  thoughts  :  whose  eye 

Sees  that,  apart  from  magnanimity, 

Wisdom  exists  not ;  nor  the  humbler  skill 

Of  Prudence,  disentangling  good  and  ill 

With  patient  care.     What  tho'  assaults  run  high, 

They  daunt  not  him  who  holds  his  ministry, 

Resolute,  at  all  hazards,  to  fulfil 

Its  duties  ; — prompt  to  move,  but  firm  to  wait, — 

Knowing  things  rashly  sought  are  rarely  found. 

That,  for  the  functions  of  an  ancient  State — 

Strong  by  her  charters,  free  because  imbound, 

Servant  of  Providence,  not  slave  of  Fate — 

Perilous  is  sweeping  change,  all  chance  unsound." 

— Sonnets  to  Liberty. 


480  WORDSWORTH 

}/]•  Heaviness — Dulness. — "  The  one  element  of  great- 
ness which  '  The  Excursion'  possesses  is  indisputably  its 
heaviness.  .  .  .  His  thought  seems  often  to  lean  upon  a 
word  too  weak  to  bear  its  weight.  .  .  .  Even  as  a 
teacher  he  is  often  too  much  of  a  pedagogue,  and  is  apt  to 
forget  that  poetry  instructs  not  by  precept  and  inculcation,  but 
by  hints  and  indirections  and  suggestions." — Lowell. 

"  Who  that  values  his  works  most  has  not  felt  the  intrusion 
there  from  time  to  time  of  something  tedious  and  prosaic  ?  " 
—  Walter  Pater. 

"  There  is,  I  should  say,  not  seldom  a  matter-of-factness  in 
certain  of  the  poems.  ...  In  this  class  I  comprise  occa- 
sional prolixity,  repetition,  and  an  eddying  instead  of  a  pro- 
gression of  thought.  .  .  .  It  is  the  awkwardness  and 
strength  of  Hercules  with  the  distaff  of  Omphale." — Coleridge. 

"  Whatever  there  may  be  of  interest  or  pathos  in  the  record 
of  Margaret's  troubles,  is  fairly  swamped  in  a  watery  world  of 
words  as  monotonous  and  colorless  as  drizzling  mist." — A.  C. 
Swinburne. 

"  It  is  easy  to  find  them  [his  works]  oppressive  and  to  com- 
plain of  him  as  heavy  and  wearisome."—^.  W.  Church. 

"  There  are  times  when  this  moralizing  tendency  leads  him 
to  the  regions  of  the  namby-pamby  or  sheer  prosaic  plati- 
tude. " — Leslie  Stephen. 

1 '  When  he  seeks  to  have  a  style  he  falls  into  ponderosity 
and  pomposity." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"Wordsworth,  the  prolific  and   discursive   poet, 
expands  himself  in  slow  and  boundless  strides.    .    .    .    They 
[his  poems]  are  a  little  heavy,  a  little  monotonous,  and  it  is 
hard  to  read  them  without  ennui." — Edmond  Scherer. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  now,  at  last, 

From  perils  manifold,  with  some  small  wealth 
Acquired  by  traffic  'mid  the  Indian  isles, 


WORDSWORTH  481 

To  his  paternal  home  he  is  returned, 

With  a  determined  purpose  to  resume 

The  life  he  had  lived  there."—  The  Brothers. 


11  The  pair,  whose  infant  she  was  bound  to  nurse, 
Forbade  her  all  communion  with  her  own  : 
Week  after  week  the  mandate  they  enforced, 
— So  near  !  yet  not  allowed,  upon  that  sight 
To  fix  her  eyes — alas  !  'twas  hard  to  bear  ! 
But  worse  affliction  must  be  borne — far  worse  ; 
For  'tis  Heaven's  will  that,  after  a  disease 
Begun  and  ended  within  three  days'  space, 
Her  child  should  die  ;  as  Ellen  now  exclaimed, 
Her  own — deserted  child  ! — Once,  only  once, 
She  saw  it  in  that  mortal  malady  ; 
And,  on  the  burial  day,  could  scarcely  gain 
Permission  to  attend  its  obsequies." — The  Excursion. 

"  The  alarm 

Ceased,  when  she  learned  through  what  mishap  I  came, 
And  by  what  help  had  gained  those  distant  fields. 
Drawn  from  her  cottage,  on  that  aery  height, 
Bearing  a  lantern  in  her  hand,  she  stood, 
Or  paced  the  ground — to  guide  her  husband  home, 
By  that  unweary  signal  kenned  afar  ; 
An  anxious  duty  !  which  the  lofty  site, 
Traversed  but  by  a  few  irregular  paths, 
Imposes,  whensoe'er  untoward  chance 
Detains  him  after  his  accustomed  hour." — The  Excursion. 

8.  Imaginative  Power. — "Lastly  and  pre-eminently  I 
challenge  for  this  poet  the  gift  of  imagination  in  the  highest 
and  strictest  sense  of  the  word.  .  .  .  Without  his  depth 
of  feeling  and  his  imaginative  power,  his  sense  would  want 
its  vital  warmth.  ...  In  imaginative  power  he  stands 
nearest  of  all  modern  writers  to  Shakespeare  and  Milton." 
— Coleridge. 

"  The  imaginative  faculty  is  that  with  which  Wordsworth  is 


482  WORDSWORTH 

most  eminently  gifted.  .  .  .  The  imagination  of  Words- 
worth has  given  to  the  external  universe  a  charm  which  has 
never  [before]  been  shed  over  it." — T.  N.  Talfourd. 

"The  reader  will  notice  that,  although  the  style  becomes 
almost  transfigured  by  the  intense  and  brooding  imagination, 
the  diction  is  still  as  simple  as  prose.  .  .  .  It  is  instinct 
with  the  most  refined  and  subtle  imagination.  .  .  .  To 
him  belongs  the  praise  of  giving  its  distinctive  character  to 
the  imaginative  literature  of  his  age.  .  .  .  It  is  evident 
that  the  fineness  of  his  imagination  requires  thought  and  atten- 
tion to  be  appreciated.  .  .  .  '  Peter  Bell '  and  «  The 
Excursion '  are  works  replete  with  elevation  of  thought  and 
grandeur  of  imagination." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"His  imagination  lends  life  and  feeling  to  the  bare  trees, 
peoples  the  tracts  of  air.  .  .  .  No  one  has  shown  the 
same  imagination  in  raising  trifles  into  importance."-  —  Will- 
iam Hazlitt. 

"  None  but  Wordsworth  has  ever  so  completely  transmuted 
by  an  imaginative  spirit  unsatisfied  yearnings  into  eternal 
truths."—  R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  His  imagination  was  a  treasure-house  whence  he  drew 
forth  things  new  and  old,  the  old  as  fresh  as  the  new." — 
/.  C.  Shairp. 

"  He  hates  science  because  it  regards  facts  without  the 
imaginative  coloring." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Every  page  of  his  poetry  abounds  with  instances  of  im- 
agination."— David  Mas  son. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  few  are  near  him  still — and  now  the  sky, 
He  hath  it  to  himself — 'tis  all  his  own. 
O  most  ambitious  Star  !  an  inquest  wrought 
Within  me  when  I  recognized  thy  light  ; 
A  moment  1  was  startled  at  the  sight  : 
And,  while  I  gazed,  there  came  to  me  a  thought 


WORDSWORTH  483 

That  I  might  step  beyond  my  natural  race 

As  thou  seem'st  now  to  do  ;  might  one  day  trace 

Some  ground  not  mine  ;  and,  strong  her  strength  above, 

My  Soul,  an  apparition  in  the  place, 

Tread  there  with  steps  which  no  one  shall  reprove." 

— Lines  on  Revisiting  Tintern  Abbey. 

"  O  Nightingale  !  thou  surely  art 
A  creature  of  a  '  fiery  heart  : ' — 
These  notes  of  thine — they  pierce  and  pierce  ; 
Tumultuous  harmony  and  fierce  ! 
Thou  sing'st  as  if  the  God  of  wine 
Had  helped  thee  to  a  valentine  ; 
A  song  in  mockery  and  despite 
Of  shades  and  dews  and  silent  night 
And  steady  bliss  and  all  the  loves 
Now  sleeping  in  these  peaceful  groves.'' 

—  The  Simplon  Pass. 

"  Then  up  I  rose, 

And  dragged  to  earth  both  branch  and  bough,  with  crash 
And  merciless  ravage  :  and  the  shady  nook 
Of  hazels,  and  the  green  and  mossy  bower, 
Deformed  and  sullied,  patiently  gave  up 
Their  quiet  being  :  and,  unless  I  now 
Confound  my  present  feelings  with  the  past, 
Ere  from  the  mutilated  bower  I  turned 
Exulting,  rich  beyond  the  wealth  of  kings, 
I  felt  a  sense  of  pain  when  I  beheld 
The  silent  trees,  and  saw  the  intruding  sky. — 
Then,  dearest  maiden,  move  along  these  shades 
In  gentleness  of  heart  ;  with  gentle  hand 
Touch — for  there  is  a  spirit  in  the  woods." — Nutting. 

9.  Sympathy  with  Humanity.  "  As  the  poet  of  suffer- 
ing and  of  sympathy  with  suffering,  his  station  is  unequalled 
in  its  kind.  .  .  .  Wordsworth  at  his  best  is  sublime  by 
the  very  force  of  his  tenderness.  .  .  .  May  his  immortal 
words  of  sympathy  find  immortal  application  to  himself." 
— A.  C.  Swinburne. 


484  WORDSWORTH 

"  The  chief  characteristic  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  consists 
in  the  profound  insight,  wide  sympathy,  and  vital  force  with 
which  it  presents  us  to  the  human  nature.  .  .  .  Words- 
worth's poems  are  profound  illustrations  of  the  '  Humanities.' 
It  is  the  broad  rough  life  of  man  that  confronts  us,  not  the 
life  of  the  sentimentalist." — Aubrey  De  Vere. 

"  It  was  here  [at  Hawkshead  in  Lancashire]  that  Words- 
worth learned  that  homely  humanity  which  gives  such  depth 
and  sincerity  to  his  poems.  .  .  .  Nothing  could  obliter- 
ate the  deep  trace  of  that  early  training  which  enables  him  to 
speak  directly  to  the  primitive  instincts  of  man.  ...  He 
has  won  for  himself  a  secure  immortality  ...  by  a 
homely  sincerity  of  human  sympathy  which  reaches  the  hum- 
blest heart. ' '  — Lowell. 

"It  was  in  this  free  pastoral  life  that  the  roots  of 
Wordsworth's  love  for  man  struck  deep.  ...  He  was 
able  ...  to  grasp  the  higher  view  of  manhood  and  to 
love  mankind.  .  .  .  He  had  compassion  on  the  im- 
moral. He  saw  in  the  idiots  those  whose  life  was  hidden 
in  God.  ...  In  wrath  and  pity  he  threw  himself  into 
the  cause  of  distressed  nationality.  .  .  .  This  was  his 
work,  to  make  unworldly  men  listen  to  the  beating  of  the 
heart  of  natural  humanity.  .  .  .  He  wrote  with  a  view 
to  show  that  men  who  do  not  wear  fine  clothes  may  feel 
deeply." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"His  poetry  meets  the  want  of  actual  life — consolation, 
help,  sympathy.  ...  In  this  intense  spiritualism,  mingled 
with  the  mildest  and  sweetest  humanity,  we  see  the  ... 
power  of  Wordsworth.  .  .  .  They  [his  poems]  will  exert 
a  vast  influence  upon  society  through  the  diffusion  of  just  and 
beautiful  sentiments  of  benevolence  and  charity. 
Mercy,  justice,  wisdom,  piety,  love,  freedom,  in  their  full 
beauty  and  grandeur  are  the  subjects  of  his  song  ;  and  we 
have  yet  to  learn  that  these  can  subsist  with  the  slightest  in- 
jury done  to  a  human  being." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


WORDSWORTH  48$ 

"The  lower  a  being  is  in  the  scale,  the  more  he  labors  to 
awaken  our  sympathy  in  its  favor.  .  .  '  .  The  experience 
of  life  opens  the  heart  to  a  kind  of  affection  for  all  created 
things. ' ' — Edmond  Scherer. 

"To  console  the  afflicted,  to  add  sunshine  to  daylight  by 
making  the  happy  happier,  this  was  his  purpose." — R.  W. 
Church. 

"Wordsworth  is  a  feeling  man;  ...  he  knows  grief 
by  sympathy  rather  than  by  suffering." — Mrs.  Browning. 

"  One  will  be  struck  with  the  author's  knowledge  of  the 
human  heart  and  the  power  he  possesses  of  stirring  up  its  deep- 
est and  gentlest  sympathies." — Francis  Jeffrey. 

"  He  sees  nothing  loftier  than  human  hopes,  nothing  deeper 
than  the  human  heart." — William  Hazlitt. 

"It  is  the  superior  depth  of  genuine  sincerity  and  truth  in 
Wordsworth's  humanity  that  renders  his  poems  indestructi- 
ble."— John  Addington  Symonds. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Unoccupied  by  sorrow  of  its  own, 

His  heart  lay  open  ;  and  by  Nature  tuned 

And  constant  disposition  of  his  thoughts 

To  sympathy  with  man,  he  was  alive 

To  all  that  was  enjoyed,  where'er  he  went, 

And  all  that  was  endured  ;  for  in  himself 

Happy,  and  quiet  in  his  cheerfulness, 

He  had  no  painful  pressure  from  without 

That  made  him  turn  about  from  wretchedness 

With  coward  fears.     He  could  afford  to  suffer 

With  those  whom  he  saw  suffer.     Hence  it  came 

That  in  our  best  experience  he  was  rich 

And  in  the  wisdom  of  our  daily  life." — The  Excursion. 

"  Heart-pleased  we  smile  upon  the  bird 
If  seen,  and  with  like  pleasure  stirred 
Commend  him,  when  he's  only  heard. 


486  WORDSWORTH 

But  small  and  fugitive  our  gain 

Compared  with  hers  who  long  hath  lain, 

With  languid  limbs  and  patient  head, 

Reposing  on  a  lone  sick  bed  ; 

Where  now  she  daily  hears  a  strain 

That  cheats  her  of  too  busy  cares, 

Eases  her  pain,  and  helps  her  prayers  ; 

And  who  but  this  dear  bird  beguiled 

The  fever  of  that  pale-faced  child  ; 

Now  cooling,  with  his  passing  wing, 

Her  forehead,  like  a  breeze  of  spring  : 

Recalling  now,  with  descant  soft, 

Shed  round  her  pillow  from  aloft, 

Sweet  thoughts  of  angels  hovering  nigh 

And  the  invisible  sympathy 

Of  *  Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke,  and  John, 

Blessing  the  bed  she  lies  upon  ?  '  " — The  Redbreast. 

"  Glad  sight  wherever  new  with  old 

Is  joined  through  some  dear  home-born  tie  ; 
The  life  of  all  that  we  behold 

Depends  upon  that  mystery. 
Vain  is  the  glory  of  the  sky, 

The  beauty  vain  of  field  and  grove, 
Unless,  while  with  admiring  eye 

We  gaze,  we  also  learn  to  love." — To  a  Lady. 

10.  Early  Puerility — Exaggeration  of  the  Triv- 
ial.— This  characteristic  is  one  for  which  Wordsworth  has 
been  severely  and  sometimes  justly  criticised. 

"  Wordsworth's  true  simplicity,  the  simplicity  which  came 
from  writing  close  to  the  truth  of  things  and  making  the  word 
rise  out  of  the  idea  conceived,  cannot  be  too  highly  com- 
mended ;  but  in  respect  to  his  false  simplicity  for  the  sake  of 
being  simple,  we  can  only  say  that  it  has  given  some  point  to 
the  sarcasm,  'that  Chaucer  writes  like  a  child  but  Words- 
worth writes  childishly.'  .  .  .  The  occasional  puerilities 
of  expression  in  his  early  poems  are  not  sufficient  to  break  the 
charm  they  exert  on  susceptible  minds." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


WORDSWORTH  487 

"  Work  altogether  inferior,  work  quite  uninspired,  flat,  and 
dull,  is  produced  by  him  with  evident  unconsciousness  of  its 
depths,  and  he  presents  it  to  us  with  the  same  faith  and  assur- 
ance as  his  best  work." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  His  taste  for  simplicity  is  evinced  by  sprinkling  up  and 
down  his  interminable  declamations  a  few  descriptions  of 
baby-houses  and  of  old  hats  and  wet  brims." — Francis  Jeffrey. 

11  Half  of  his  pieces  are  childish,  almost  foolish.  .  .  . 
All  the  poets  in  the  world  could  not  reconcile  us  to  so  much 
tedium.  .  .  .  This  sentimental  prettiness  quickly  grows 
insipid,  and  the  style  by  its  factitious  simplicity  renders  it 
still  more  insipid." — Taine. 

11  His  simplicity  is  not  infrequently  childish ;  his  calmness, 
stagnation;  his  pathos,  puerility." — If.  T.  Tuckerman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  he  is  lean  and  he  is  sick  : 

His  body,  dwindled  and  awry, 
Rests  upon  ankles  swollen  and  thick  ; 
His  legs  are  thin  and  dry  ; 

"  Few  months  of  life  he  has  in  store, 

As  he  to  you  will  tell, 
For  still,  the  more  he  works,  the  more 
Do  his  weak  ankles  swell." — Simon  Lee. 

11  There's  George  Fisher,  Charles  Fleming,  and  Reginald  Shore, 
Three  rosy-cheeked  school-boys,  the  highest  not  more 
Than  the  height  of  a  counsellor's  bag  ; 
To  the  top  of  Great  How  did  it  please  them  to  climb, 
And  there  they  built  up,  without  mortar  or  lime, 
A  man  on  the  peak  of  the  crag. 

"  They  built  him  of  stones  gathered  up  as  they  lay  : 
Thy  built  him  and  christened  him  all  in  one  day, 
An  urchin  both  vigorous  and  hale  ; 
And  so  without  scruple  they  called  him  Ralph  Jones." 

— Rural  Architecture. 


488  WORDSWORTH 

".All,  all  is  silent — rocks  and  woods 
All  still  and  silent — far  and  near ! 
Only  the  ass,  with  motion  dull, 
Upon  the  pivot  of  his  skull 
Turns  round  his  long  left  ear. 

Upon  the  beast  the  sapling  rings  ; 

His  lank  sides  heaved,  his  limbs  they  stirred; 

He  gave  a  groan,  and  then  another, 

Of  that  which  went  before  the  brother, 

And  then  he  gave  a  third." — Peter  Bell. 

ii.  Freshness  —  Originality.  —  "Wordsworth  is  the 
most  original  poet  now  [1830]  living.  .  .  .  His  poetry 
is  not  external  but  internal  ;  it  does  not  depend  upon  tradition 
or  story  or  old  song  ;  he  furnishes  it  from  his  own  mind  and 
is  his  own  subject." — William  Hazlitt. 

"The  choice  of  his  characters  from  humble  and  rustic  life 
was  caused  partly  from  the  original  make  of  his  nature. 
.  .  .  He  was  the  first  who  both  in  theory  and  in  practice 
shook  off  the  trammels  of  the  so-called  poetic  diction  which 
had  tyrannized  over  English  poetry  for  more  than  a  century. 
.  .  .  What  contemporary  poet  has  left  to  his  country  such 
a  gallery  of  new  and  individual  portraits  as  a  permanent  pos- 
session?"—J.  C.  Shairp. 

"  There  is  no  poet  who  gives  to  his  poems  so  perfectly  a 
new  birth  as  Wordsworth.  ...  In  his  poems  there  will 
ever  be  a  spring  of  something  even  fresher  than  poetic  life — a 
pure,  deep  well  of  solitary  joy." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  How  pure  and  fresh  his  poetry  is  !  how  healthy  and  nat- 
ural, but  how  true  to  Nature  and  how  near  to  God  !  " — Stop- 
ford  Brooke. 

"  No  frequency  of  perusal  can  deprive  his  poems  of  their 
freshness.  '  The  River  Duddon  '  is  singularly  pure  in  style 
and  fresh  in  conception.  .  .  .  This  atmosphere  is  some- 
times sparklingly  clear,  as  if  the  air  and  dew  and  sunshine  of  a 


WORDSWORTH  489 

May  morning  had  found  a  home  in  his  imagination." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  Nature  herself  seems,  I  say,  to  take  the  pen  out  of  his 
hand  and  to  write  for  him  with  her  own  bare,  sheer,  penetrat- 
ing power.  ...  He  can  and  will  treat  a  subject  with 
nothing  but  the  most  plain,  first-hand,  almost  austere  natural- 
ness. ' '  — Matthew  Arnold. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Up  with  me  !  up  with  me,  into  the  clouds  : 
For  thy  song,  Lark,  is  strong  ; 
Up  with  me,  up  with  me,  into  the  clouds  ! 
Singing,  singing, 

With  clouds  and  sky  about  thee  ringing, 
Lift  me,  guide  me,  till  I  find 
That  spot  that  seems  so  to  thy  mind." 

—  To  a  Sky-Lark. 

"  O  blithe  new-comer  !  I  have  heard, 

I  hear  thee  and  rejoice. 
O  Cuckoo  !  shall  I  call  thee  bird, 
Or  but  a  wandering  voice  ? 

"  While  I  am  lying  on  the  grass 

Thy  twofold  shout  I  hear  ; 
From  hill  to  hill  it  seems  to  pass, 
At  once  far  off  and  near. 

"  Though  bubbling  only  to  the  vale, 

Of  sunshine  and  of  flowers, 
Thou  bringest  unto  me  a  tale 
Of  visionary  hours. 

"  Thrice  welcome,  darling  of  the  spring  ! 

Even  yet  thou  art  to  me 
No  bird,  but  an  invisible  thing, 

A  voice,  a  mystery." —  7b  the  Cuckoo. 

"  Beneath  these  fruit-tree  boughs  that  shed 
Their  snow-white  blossoms  on  my  head, 
With  brightest  sunshine  round  me  spread 


490  WORDSWORTH 

Of  spring's  unclouded  weather, 
In  this  sequestered  nook  how  sweet 
To  sit  upon  my  orchard  seat ! 
And  birds  and  flowers  once  more  to  greet, 

My  last  year's  friends  together." 

—  The  Green  Linnet. 

12.  Pathos. — "  To  many  '  The  Excursion  '  will  always 
be  dear  for  the  pictures  of  mountain  scenes  and  the  pa- 
thetic records  of  rural  life  which  it  contains. 
For  feelings,  not  on  the  surface  but  in  the  depth,  pathos 
pure  and  profound,  what  of  modern  verse  can  equal  this 
story  ['The  Excursion']  and  that  of  Margaret?" — J.  C. 
Shairp. 

"  The  most  especial  and  distinctive  quality  of  his  genius  is 
rather  its  pathetic  than  its  meditative  note." — A.  C.  Swin- 
burne. 

"  He  sees  images  in  his  own  words  of  man  suffering  amid 
awful  forms  and  powers.  .  .  .  He  is  the  true  forerunner 
of  the  deepest  and  most  passionate  poetry  of  our  own  day." — 
Walter  Pater. 

"  Nothing  can  exceed  the  pathos  with  which  Wordsworth 
can  tell  these  simple  local  stories." — David  Masson. 

"  To  me  the  pathos  of  Wordsworth  is  like  the  sweetness  of 
Michael  Angelo.  As  the  sweetness  of  Michael  Angelo  is 
sweeter  than  that  of  other  men  because  of  his  strength,  so  the 
pathos  of  Wordsworth  is  the  more  moving  because  of  the  calm- 
ness and  reserve  with  which  it  is  clothed.  ...  In  mild 
and  philosophic  pathos  Wordsworth  seems  to  me  without  a 
compeer. ' '  —  Coleridge. 

"  The  still,  searching  pathos  of  '  We  Are  Seven '  .  .  . 
indicates  a  vision  into  the  deepest  sources  of  emotion." — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  No  one  has  displayed  the  same  pathos  in  treating  of  the 
simplest  feelings  of  the  heart." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  In   'We  Are  Seven/  indeed,  the  pathos  overcomes  the 


WORDSWORTH  49! 

quaint  familiarity  of  style,  and  embodies  the  touching  senti- 
ment with  irresistible  effect.     ...     He  showed  with  Burns 
how  far  deep  down  the  pathetic  and  the  tender  go  in  life."- 
^?.  W.  Church. 

"We  often  meet  in  his  works  little  passages  in  which  we 
seem  almost  to  contemplate  the  well-spring  of  pure  emotion 
and  gentle  pathos.  ...  No  [other]  poet  has  done  such 
justice  to  the  depth  and  fulness  of  maternal  love." — T.  N. 
Talfourd. 

"  In  this  poem  ["  Margaret  "]  there  is  a  profound  pathos 
swelling  in  volume  to  the  end.  .  .  .  Pathos  is  a  charac- 
teristic of  nearly  all  of  Wordsworth's  poems,  but  the  tears 
which  it  brings  to  the  eyes  are  often  those  of  gladness  mingled 
with  regret." — Aubrey  De  Vere. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thus  they  were  calmed 

And  cheered  ;  and  now  together  breathe  fresh  air 
In  open  fields  ;  and  when  the  glare  of  day 
Is  gone,  and  twilight  to  the  mother's  wish 
Befriends  the  observance,  readily  they  join 
In  walks  whose  boundary  is  the  lost  one's  grave, 
Which  he  with  flowers  hath  planted,  finding  there 
Amusement,  where  the  Mother  does  not  miss 
Dear  consolation,  kneeling  on  the  turf 
In  prayer,  yet  blending  with  that  solemn  rite 
Of  pious  faith  the  vanities  of  grief  ; 
For  such,  by  pitying  angels  and  by  spirits 
Transferred  to  regions  upon  which  the  clouds 
Of  our  weak  nature  rest  not,  must  be  deemed 
Those  willing  tears  and  unforbidden  sighs, 
And  all  those  tokens  of  a  cherished  sorrow, 
Which,  soothed  and  sweetened  by  the  grace  of  Heaven 
As  now  it  is,  seems  to  her  own  fond  heart 
Immortal  as  the  love  that  gave  it  being." 

— Maternal  Grief. 


492  WORDSWORTH 

"  Alas  !  the  fowls  of  heaven  have  wings, 

And  blasts  of  heaven  will  aid  their  flight ; 

They  mount — how  short  a  voyage  brings 
The  wanderers  back  to  their  delight ! 

Chains  tie  us  down  by  land  and  sea  ; 

And  wishes,  vain  as  mine,  may  be 

All  that  is  left  to  comfort  thee. 

"  Perhaps  some  dungeon  hears  thee  groan, 
Maimed,  mangled  by  inhuman  men  ; 

Or  thou  upon  a  desert  thrown 
Inheritest  the  lion's  den  ; 

Or  hast  been  summoned  to  the  deep, 

Thou,  thou  and  all  thy  mates,  to  keep 

An  incommunicable  sleep. 

"  Beyond  participation  lie 

My  troubles,  and  beyond  relief : 
If  any  chance  to  heave  a  sigh, 

They  pity  me  and  not  my  grief. 
Then  come  to  me,  my  Son,  or  send 
Some  tidings,  that  my  woes  may  end  : 
I  have  no  other  earthly  friend." 

—  The  Affliction  of  Margaret. 

"  Unblest  distinction  !  showered  on  me 
To  bind  a  lingering  life  in  chains  : 

All  that  could  quit  my  grasp,  or  flee, 
Is  gone  ; — but  not  the  subtle  stains 

Fixed  in  the  spirit ;  for  even  here 

Can  I  be  proud  that  jealous  fear 
Of  what  I  was  remains. 

"  A  woman  rules  my  prison's  key  ; 

A  sister  Queen,  against  the  bent 
Of  law  and  holiest  sympathy, 

Detains  me,  doubtful  of  the  event ; 
Great  God,  who  feel'st  for  my  distress, 
My  thoughts  are  all  that  I  possess  ; 
Oh  keep  them  innocent !  " 

— Lament  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots. 


WORDSWORTH 


493 


13.   Didacticism. — "To  teach  the  young  and  the  gra- 
cious of  every  age  to  see,  to  think,  and  to  feel     .     .     .     this 
is  his  own  account  of  the  purpose  of  his  poetry. 
'  Every  great  poet,'  he  said,  '  is  a  teacher;  I  wish  either  to 
be  considered  as  a  teacher  or  as  nothing.'  " — R.   W.  Church. 

(t  In  what  high  vein  can  he  write  in  whom  the  spirit  of 
prophecy  is  replaced  by  the  spirit  of  mere  teaching? 
He  wrote  to  impress  the  world  with  a  sense  of  their  [the 
poor]  dignity  in  suffering  and  the  moral  grandeur  of  their 
honest  poverty." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  His  habit  of  seeking  and  finding  lessons  in  the  smallest 
incidents  of  his  walks  passes  into  a  didactic  mania." — Ed- 
mond  Scherer. 

"  Every  little  lyric  ...  is  organically  connected 
with  the  long  narrative  and  didactive  poems." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  He  saw  a  grandeur,  a  beauty,  a  teaching  in  trivial  events. 
.  .  .  In  short,  the  poem  ["  The  Excursion  "]  is  as  grave 
and  dull  as  a  sermon." — Tame. 

"  He  does  actually  convey  to  the  reader  an  extraordinary 
wisdom  in  the  things  of  practice." — Walter  Pater. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  are  in  our  existence  spots  of  time, 
That  with  distinct  pre-eminence  retain 
A  renovating  virtue,  whence,  depressed 
By  false  opinion  and  contentious  thought, 
Or  aught  of  heavier  or  more  deadly  weight, 
In  trivial  occupations,  and  the  round 
Of  ordinary  intercourse,  our  minds 
Are  nourished  and  invisibly  repaired  ; 
A  virtue  by  which  pleasure  is  enhanced, 
That  penetrates,  enables  us  to  mount, 
When  high,  more  high,  and  lifts  us  up  when  fallen." 

—  The  Prelude. 


494  WORDSWORTH 

"  A  piteous  lot  were  it  to  flee  from  man — 
Yet  not  rejoice  in  nature.     He  whose  hours 
Are  by  domestic  pleasures  uncaressed 
And  unenlivened  ;  who  exists  whole  years 
Apart  from  benefits  received  or  done 
'Mid  the  transactions  of  the  bustling  crowd  ; 
Who  neither  hears  nor  feels  a  wish  to  hear 
Of  the  world's  interests — such  a  one  hath  need 
Of  a  quick  fancy  and  an  active  heart, 
That,  for  the  day's  consumption,  books  may  yield 
Food  not  unwholesome  ;  earth  and  air  correct 
His  morbid  humor,  with  delight  supplied 
Or  solace,  varying  as  the  seasons  change." 

—  The  Excursion. 

"  Fit  retribution,  by  the  moral  code 

Determined,  lies  beyond  the  State's  embrace  ; 

Yet,  as  she  may,  for  each  peculiar  case 

She  plants  well-measured  terrors  in  the  road 

Of  wrongful  acts.     Downward  it  is  and  broad, 

And,  the  main  fear  once  doomed  to  banishment, 

Far  oftener  then,  bad  ushering  worse  event, 

Blood  would  be  spilt  that  in  his  dark  abode 

Crime  might  lie  better  hid.     And,  should  the  change 

Take  from  the  horror  due  to  a  foul  deed, 

Pursuit  and  evidence  so  far  must  fail, 

And,  guilt  escaping,  passion  then  might  plead 

In  angry  spirits  for  her  old  free  range, 

And  the  '  wild  justice  of  revenge'  prevail." 

— Sonnets  upon  the  Punishment  of  Death. 

14.  Grandeur— Stateliness  —  Serenity.—  "  Words- 
worth walks,  .  .  .  though  he  limps  at  times,  with  almost 
as  stately  a  step  as  Milton.  ...  I  cannot  but  think  that 
the  element  of  grandeur  of  style  .  .  .  flowed  largely 
from  the  solemn  simplicity.  .  .  .  The  power  which  in 
Nature  .  .  .  made  her  hours  of  calm,  produced  calm  in 
him,  and  a  certain  love  of  calm  in  himself  strengthened  the 
impression.  ...  He  felt  the  loveliness  and  calm  in  the 


WORDSWORTH  495 


world  as  similar  to  moral  loveliness  and  calm,  and  as  age  grew 
on,  his  calmness  deepened." — Stopford Brooke. 

1 '  In  '  The  Excursion  '  we  forget  the  poverty  of  the  getting 
up  to  admire  the  purity  and  elevation  of  the  thought. 
This  book  is  like  a  Protestant  temple,  august,  though  bare  and 
monotonous.     .     .     .     They  [his  stanzas]  resemble  the  grand 
monotonous  music  of  the  organ." — Taine. 

A  dream  which  reaches  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  sublimity 
.  expressly  framed  to  illustrate  the  eternity.  .  .  . 
No  describer  so  powerful  or  idealizing  so  magnificently  what 
he  deals  with,  has  been  a  spectator  of  parallel  scenes." — De 
Quincey. 

"  He  clothes  the  naked  with  beauty  and  grandeur.  .  .  . 
His  mind  seemed  embued  with  the  majesty  and  solemnity  of 
the  objects  around  him." — William  Hazlitt. 

"  His  diction  never  in  his  best  works  is  deficient  in  splendor 
and  compass.  ...  In  this  faculty  of  awakening  senti- 
ments of  grandeur,  sublimity,  beauty,  affection,  devotion, 
.  .  .  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  parallel  to  Words- 
worth. .  .  .  He  is  above  the  tempests  and  turbulence  of 
life,  and  moves  in  regions  where  serenity  is  strength." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Serene  will  be  our  days  and  bright, 
And  happy  will  our  nature  be, 
When  love  is  an  unerring  light, 
And  joy  its  own  security. 
And  they  a  blissful  course  may  hold 
Even  now,  who,  not  unwisely  bold, 
Live  in  the  spirit  of  this  creed ; 
Yet  seek  thy  firm  support,  according  to  their  need." 

—  Ode  to  Duty. 

*'  Child  of  the  clouds !  remote  from  every  taint 
Of  sordid  industry  thy  lot  is  cast ; 
Thine  are  the  honors  of  the  lofty  waste  ; 
Not  seldom,  when  with  heat  the  valleys  faint, 


WORDSWORTH 

Thy  handmaid  Frost  with  spangled  tissues  quaint 
Thy  cradle  decks  ; — to  chant  thy  birth,  thou  hast 
No  meaner  poet  than  the  whistling  Blast, 
And  Desolation  is  thy  Patron-saint !  " 

—  The  River  Duddon. 

Child  of  loud -throated  War  !  the  mountain  stream 

Roars  in  thy  hearing  ;  but  thy  hour  of  rest 

Is  come,  and  thou  art  silent  in  thy  age  ; 

Save  when  the  wind  sweeps  by  and  sounds  are  caught 

Ambiguous,  neither  wholly  thine  nor  theirs. 

Oh  !  there  is  life  that  breathes  not ;  powers  there  are 

That  touch  each  other  to  the  quick  in  modes 

Which  the  gross  world  no  sense  hath  to  perceive, 

No  soul  to  dream  of." — Address  to  Kile  hum  Castle. 


EMERSON,  1803-1882 

Biographical  Outline. — Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  born 
in  Boston,  Mass.,  May  25,  1803,  the  second  of  five  sons; 
father  pastor  of  the  "First  Church"  (Congregational)  of 
Boston;  Emerson  enters  the  public  grammar  school  in  1811 
and  the  Boston  Latin  School  soon  afterward  ;  at  the  age  of 
eleven  (1814)  he  is  translating  Virgil  into  English  verse  ;  he  is 
fond,  also,  of  Greek,  history,  and  poetry ;  he  composes  verses, 
and  thinks  highly  of  "  the  idle  books  under  the  bench  at  the 
Latin  School;  "  he  enters  Harvard  College  in  1818,  and  is 
graduated  in  1821  ;  he  receives  second  prize  for  English  com- 
position in  his  Senior  year,  but  gives  little  evidence  of  remark- 
able ability  while  in  college ;  he  joins  his  brother  William  in 
conducting  a  private  school  at  Boston,  and  later  serves  as 
principal  of  an  "Academy"  at  Chelmsford,  now  a  part  of 
Lowell ;  later  he  has  a  private  school  at  Cambridge. 

In  1823  he  begins  studying  for  the  ministry  under  Dr. 
Charming,  afterward  taking  a  course  of  lectures  at  the  Har- 
vard Divinity  School ;  owing  to  trouble  with  his  eyes,  he 
takes  no  notes  at  the  Divinity  School,  and  is  excused  from  the 
examinations;  Emerson  wrote  later,  "If  they  had  examined 
me,  they  probably  would  not  have  let  me  preach  at  all ; " 
in  1826  he  is  "approbated  to  preach"  by  the  Middlesex 
Association  of  Ministers  ;  he  visits  South  Carolina  and  Florida 
during  the  winter  of  1827-28,  and  preaches  several  times  at 
Charleston  and  other  places ;  returning,  he  preaches  temporar- 
ily in  several  New  England  towns;  in  March,  1829,  he  is 
ordained  colleague  of  Dr.  Ware  in  the  "  Second  Church  "  of 
Boston;  in  September,  1829,  he  marries  Ellen  Louisa 
Tucker,  who  dies  of  consumption  in  February,  1832;  in 
32  497 


498  EMERSON 

September,  1832,  he  preaches  his  famous  sermon  on  the 
Lord's  Supper,  expressing  his  scruples  against  administering 
the  same  and  announcing  his  intention,  therefore,  to  resign 
his  office. 

He  visits  Europe  in  1833,  making  a  tour  of  Sicily,  Italy, 
France,  and  England,  and  meeting  Coleridge,  Wordsworth, 
Landor,  De  Quincey,  and  Carlyle ;  he  becomes  a  resident  of 
Concord  in  the  summer  of  1834,  first  occupying  the  "  Old 
Manse"  of  Hawthorne's  novel;  he  begins  lecturing  in  the 
winter  of  1833-34,  giving  three  lectures  treating  of  his  Eu- 
ropean experiences  and  two,  respectively,  on  "  Water"  and 
"The  Relation  of  Man  to  the  Globe;"  during  1834  he 
lectures  on  Michael  Angelo,  Milton,  Luther,  George  Fox, 
and  Burke  ;  the  first  two  of  these  lectures  were  published  in 
the  North  American  Review  for  1837-38  ;  Emerson  begins, 
in  May,  1834,  his  correspondence  with  Carlyle,  which  lasts 
till  1872  ;  in  September,  1835,  he  marries  Lydia  Jackson,  of 
Plymouth,  Mass.;  during  1835  he  gives  ten  lectures  in  Bos- 
ton on  "English  Literature;"  in  1836,  twelve  lectures  on 
"The  Philosophy  of  History;"  in  1837,  ten  lectures  on 
"Human  Culture;"  in  April,  1836,  he  writes  his  great 
"Commemoration  Ode;"  till  1838  he  preaches  frequently 
as  a  "supply"  at  East  Lexington,  Mass.;  he  lectures  on 
"War"  in  1837,  and  publishes  anonymously  in  1836  his 
small  book  entitled  "Nature,"  which  Holmes  calls  "a  re- 
flective prose  poem;"  in  August,  1837,  he  delivers  his  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Cambridge,  entitled  "  The  American 
Scholar;"  on  July  15,  1838,  he  delivers  at  Cambridge  his 
Divinity  School  Address,  which  excites  severe  criticism  by 
theologians  and  raises  Emerson  "  to  the  importance  of  a  here- 
tic ;  "  in  1838-39  he  gives  ten  lectures  on  "Human  Life," 
of  which  these  titles — "Love,"  "Demonology,"  and  "The 
Comic  " — remain  in  his  published  works  ;  he  contributes,  dur- 
ing 1838  and  1839,  the  poems  entitled  "  The  Humble  Bee  " 
and  "To  the  Rhodora"  to  the  Western  Messenger  (both 


EMERSON  499 

poems  written  about  1823);  in  July,  1838,  he  lectures  on 
"  Literary  Ethics"  at  Dartmouth  College;  in  December, 
1838,  Emerson  writes  to  Carlyle  that  he  has  $22,000  draw- 
ing six  per  cent,  interest,  besides  his  house,  his  two-acre  lot, 
and  an  income  of  $800  from  his  lectures;  in  August,  1841, 
he  lectures  at  Waterville,  Me.,  on  "  The  Method  of  Nature  ;  " 
writing  to  Carlyle  about  this  time,  Emerson  calls  himself 
"  an  incorrigible  spouting  Yankee." 

From  1840  to  1844  he  contributes  more  than  thirty  arti- 
cles, including  some  of  his  best  poems,  to  the  Dial,  first 
edited  by  Margaret  Fuller,  and  later  (1842-44)  by  Emerson 
himself;  during  1841  he  delivers,  also,  his  lectures  on  "Man 
the  Reformer,"  "The  Times,"  "The  Transcendentalist," 
and  "The  Conservative;"  he  publishes,  during  1841,  his 
first  volume  of  collected  essays,  including  those  on  History, 
Self-Reliance,  Compensation,  Spiritual  Laws,  Love,  Friend- 
ship, Prudence,  Heroism,  the  Over-Soul,  Circles,  and  Art; 
in  February,  1842,  he  loses  his  only  son,  then  five  years  old, 
whom  he  mourns  to  Carlyle  as  "  a  piece  of  love  and  sunshine 
well  worth  my  watching  from  morning  jto  night,"  and  writes 
"  A  Threnody  "  in  memory  of  his  lost  child ;  he  delivers  his 
address  on  "  The  Young  American  "  in  February,  1844,  and 
publishes,  during  the  same  year,  the  second  volume  of  his 
essays;  he  lectures  also  on  "New  England  Reformers"  dur- 
ing 1844,  and  publishes  the  first  volume  of  his  poems  in  1846  ; 
he  sails  a  second  time  for  Europe  October  5,  1847  ;  after 
spending  a  week  with  Carlyle,  Emerson  begins  a  lecture  tour, 
arranged  for  him  by  the  Rev.  Alexander  Ireland ;  while  lect- 
uring in  Edinburgh  he  meets  Leigh  Hunt,  De  Quincey,  and 
many  other  notabilities;  he  visits  Paris  before  returning  to 
America;  in  1850  he  publishes  selections  from  his  English 
lectures  under  the  title  "  Representative  Men  ;  "  during  1855 
he  delivers  anti-slavery  addresses  in  New  York  and  Boston, 
favoring  the  purchase  of  the  slaves  by  the  Government,  and 
also  supports  female  suffrage  in  an  address  before  the  Woman's 


500  EMERSON 

Rights  Convention  ;  in  1856  he  publishes  "  English  Traits;  " 
in  1857  he  begins  to  contribute  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  then 
just  established,  and  continues  till  his  twenty-eighth  article ; 
he  helps  to  found  the  famous  "  Saturday  Club,"  which  in- 
cludes Hawthorne,  Motley,  Dana,  Lowell,  Whipple,  Agassiz, 
Holmes,  Longfellow,  and  others;  during  1858  he  publishes 
his  essay  on  Persian  Poetry. 

In  1859  Emerson  makes  his  greatest  public  speech-— at  the 
Burns  Festival  in  Boston  ;  in  1860  he  publishes  the  "  Conduct 
of  Life  ;"  in  1862  he  delivers  his  funeral  address  over  Tho- 
reau  and  his  Address  on  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  ; 
during  1863  he  publishes  "The  Boston  Hymn,"  "Volun- 
taries," and  many  other  poems;  during  1866  he  writes 
"Terminus,"  one  of  his  noblest  poems;  during  1868,  1869, 
and  1870  he  lectures  at  Harvard  University  on  "  The  Natural 
History  of  the  Intellect ;  "  in  1870  he  publishes  "  Society  and 
Solitude;  "  during  1871  he  visits  California  in  company  with 
Professor  J.  B.  Thayer,  who  afterward  published  an  account 
of  the  journey ;  Emerson  loses  a  part  of  his  house  and  many 
valuable  papers  by  fire  in  July,  1872  ;  he  sails  the  third  time 
for  Europe  in  October,  1872,  in  company  with  his  daughter 
Ellen,  going  as  far  as  Egypt ;  during  his  absence  friends  sub- 
scribe $11,620  for  the  rebuilding  of  his  house;  he  returns  to 
Concord  in  May,  1873,  and  is  greeted  with  a  popular  ova- 
tion ;  in  1874  he  publishes  "  Parnassus,"  a  collection  of 
poems  from  British  and  American  authors ;  during  the  same 
year  he  is  nominated  Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of  Glas- 
gow, and  receives  five  hundred  votes  against  seven  hundred 
for  Disraeli,  which  he  calls  "quite  the  fairest  laurel  that  has 
ever  fallen  on  me;  "  in  April,  1875,  he  delivers  an  address 
at  Concord  on  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  "  the  fight 
at  the  bridge;  "  before  the  shock  of  the  fire  in  1872  his  men- 
tal powers,  especially  his  memory,  began  to  show  signs  of 
failure ;  in  March,  1878,  he  lectures  in  the  Old  South  Church 
at  Boston  on  "  Fortune  of  the  Republic ;  "  in  May,  1879,  he 


[ERSON  501 

lectures  at  Harvard  University  on  "The  Preacher;"  in  1881 
he  reads  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  a  paper 
on  Carlyle;  in  February,  1882,  he  publishes  in  the  Century 
an  article  on  "  Superlatives;  "  he  dies  at  Concord,  April  27, 
1882. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON   EMERSON'S   STYLE. 

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and  234-259. 
Stedman,  E.  C,  "Poets  of  America."     Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  77-90. 
Sanborn,  F.  B.,    "The  Genius  and  Character  of  Emerson."     Boston, 

1885,  Osgood,  1-425. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Recollections."     Boston,  1878,  Ticknor,  119-154. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Works."     Boston,  1891,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  i: 

349-361. 
Arnold,  M.,    "Discourses    in   America."      London,    1885,    Macmillan, 

138-207. 
Morley,  J.,  "Critical  Miscellanies."     New  York,  1893,  Macmillan,    I: 

293-346. 
Powell,  T.,   "The   Living  Authors  of   America."     New  York,    1850, 

Stringer,  49-77. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "  Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1882, 

Griggs,  2  :   523-542. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."    New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

i  :  33Q-371  and  2:   137-172. 

Birrell,  A.,  "Obiter  Dicta,"  New  York,  1887,  Scribner,  2:  238-256. 
Gilfillan,  G.,  "  Literary  Portraits."  Edinburgh,  1851-52,  J.  Hogg,  i: 

195-208  ;   2  :    120-135 ;   3  :  328-336. 
Grimm,    H.,    "Literature."     Boston,    1886,   Cupples,   Upham  &   Co., 

1-44. 
Burroughs,  J.,  "Indoor  Studies."     Boston,  1893,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  128-162. 
Conway,    M.    D.,    "Emerson  at  Home  and  Abroad."     Boston,    1882, 

Osgood,  1-383. 
Alcott,  A.  B.,  "Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,"  etc.     Boston,  1882,  Cupples, 

Upham  &  Co.,  1-56. 
Woodbury,  C.  R.,    "Talks  with  Emerson."     New  York,    1890,  Baker 

&  Taylor,  1-177. 
James,  H.,  "Partial  Portraits."     New  York,  1888,  Macmillan,  1-34. 


5O2  EMERSON 

Guernsey,   A.  H  ,    '-'Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,   Philosopher   and    Poet." 

New  York,  1881,  Appleton,  1-327. 
Hawthorne,  J.,  "  Confessions  and  Criticisms."     Boston,  1887,  Ticknor, 

186-217. 
Walsh,  W.  S.   (Shepard),    "Pen   Pictures  of  Modern  Authors."     New 

York,  1886,  Putnam,  86-98. 
Dana,  W.  F.,  "The  Optimism  of  Emerson."     Boston,  1886,  Cupples, 

Upham  &  Co.,  1-64. 
Bungay,    G.  W.,    "Off- Hand   Takings."      New    York,  1854,    Dewitt, 

119-127. 

Nichol,  J.,  "American  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1882,  Black,  254-321. 
Parton,   J.,  "Some  Noted  Princes,"  etc.     New   York,   1885,   Crowell, 

284-  288. 
Garnet,  R.  (Robertson),  "  Great  Writers  "  (Emerson).  New  York,  1888, 

Whitaker. 
Friswell,  J.  H.,    "Modern  Men  of  Letters."     London,   1870,   Hodder 

&  Stoughton,  333-342. 
Frothingham,   O.    B.,    "Transcendentalism  in  New    England."      New 

York,  1876,  Putnam,  218-249. 
Hunt,  T.  W.,    "Studies  in  Literature  and  Style."     New  York,   1890, 

Armstrong,  246-279. 
Willis,  N.  P.  ,    "  Hurrygraphs. "     Rochester,    New  York,    1853,  Alden 

Beardsly  Co.,  169-179. 
Scudder,  H.  E.,  "Men  and  Letters."     Boston,  1889,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  I47-I7I- 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  "Modern  Humanists."     London,  1891,  Swan,    Son- 

nenschein  &  Co.,  112-137. 
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Christian  Examiner,  30:  253-262  (C.  C.  Felton);   38:   87-106   (F.    H. 

Hedge);  48:   314-318  (C.  A.  Bartol). 
North  American  Review,  136:   431-446  (E.  P.  Whipple);    130:  479-499 

(F.    H.   Underwood);  70:   520-524  (C.  E.  Norton);   70:   520-525 

(C.  E.  Norton);    140:    129-144  (Geo.  Bancroft). 
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(Burroughs);  4:   265-272  (H.  James,  Jr.). 
The  Chautauquan,  ij :   687-692  (J.  V.  Cheney). 
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ginson). 

The  Arena>  10:   736-745  (W.  H.  Savage). 
Harpers  Magazine,  52  :  417-420  (E.  P.  Whipple) ;  68  :  457~4°8  (Annie 

Fields);  65:  278-281  (J.  Hawthorne);  65:   576-587  (E.  P.  Whip- 
pie). 


EMERSON  503 

Scribner's  Monthly,  17:  496-512  (F.  B.  Sanborn). 

Literary  World,  II  :    175-176   (T.   W.   Higginson)  and    174-185,  obse- 
quies (several  authors). 

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People's  Journal,  4:   305-15  (Parke  Godwin).      ' 
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Dial  (Chicago),  10:  49-51  (O.  F.  Emerson). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

Optimism  --  Serenity  —  Wholesomeness. — 

Emerson's  sympathetic  benevolence  comes  from  what  he 
calls  his 'persistent  optimism.'  .  .  .  Never  had  man  such 
a  sense  of  the  inexhaustibleness  of  nature  and  such  hope. 
Happiness  in  labor — rightness  and  veracity  in  all  the  life  of 
the  spirit,  happiness  and  eternal  hope — that  was  Emerson's 
gospel.  .  .  .  His  persistent  optimism  is  the  root  of  his 
greatness  and  the  source  of  his  charm.  .  .  .  Strong  as 
was  Emerson's  optimism,  and  unconquerable  as  was  his  be- 
lief in  a  good  result  to  emerge  from  all  which  he  saw  going 
on  around  him,  no  misanthropical  satirist  ever  saw  short- 
comings and  absurdities  more  clearly  than  he  did,  or  exposed 
them  more  courageously.  .  .  .  Truly,  his  insight  is  ad- 
mirable, his  truth  is  precious ;  yet  the  secret  of  his  effect  is 
not  even  in  these;  it  is  in  his  temper.  It  is  in  the  hopeful, 
serene,  beautiful  temper  wherewith  these,  in  Emerson,  are 
indissolubly  joined ;  in  which  they  work,  and  have  their 
being." — Matthew  Arnold. 

11  Emerson  looked  serenely  at  the  ugly  aspect  of  contem- 
porary life  because,  as  an  optimist,  he  was  a  herald  of  the 
future.  .  .  .  Carlyle,  as  a  pessimist,  denounced  the  pres- 


504  EMERSON 

ent,  and  threw  all  the  energy  of  his  vivid  dramatic  genius  into 
vitalizing  the  past.  He  [Emerson]  declared,  even  when 
current  events  appeared  ugliest  to  the  philanthropist,  that 
1  the  highest  thought  and  the  deepest  love  is  born  with  Vic- 
tory at  its  head.'  " — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  He  was  an  optimist  with  reverent  intent.  It  was  in  vain 
to  ask  him  to  assert  what  he  did  not  know,  to  avow  a  creed 
founded  upon  his  hopes.  .  .  .  He  looked  upon  nature 
as  pregnant  with  soul ;  for  him  the  spirit  always  moved  upon 
the  face  of  the  waters.  The  incomprehensible  plan  was  per- 
fect. Whatever  is,  is  right." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  He  had  faith  that  the  goodness  and  wisdom  of  humanity 
would,  in  the  long  run,  prove  to  be  more  than  equal  to  the 
goodness  and  wisdom  of  any  possible  man  ;  and  that  men 
would  govern  themselves  more  nobly  and  successfully  than 
any  individual  monarch  could  govern  them.  .  .  .  He  is 
the  champion  of  the  Republic ;  he  is  our  future  living  in  our 
present  and  showing  the  world,  by  anticipation,  what  sort  of 
excellence  we  are  capable  of." — Julian  Hawthorne. 

"  'Tis  everything  to  have  a  true  believer  in  the  world, 
dealing  with  men  and  women  as  if  they  were  divine  in  idea 
and  real  in  fact ;  meeting  persons  and  events  at  a  glance 
directly,  not  at  a  million  removes,  and  so  passing  fair  and 
fresh  into  life  and  literature  the  delights  and  ornaments  of 
the  race."— A.  B.  Alcott. 

11  He  was  an  optimist,  always  full  of  hope,  finding  sky-born 
music  in  everything  and  a  power  in  nature  to  lift  better  up  to 
best." — George  Bancroft. 

"  The  greatness  of  his  work  consists  in  the  measure  of 
pure  genius  and  of  inspiration  to  noble  and  heroic  conduct 
which  it  holds.  Asa  writer  he  had  but  one  aim,  namely,  to 
inspire,  to  wake  up  his  reader  or  hearer  to  the  noblest  and  the 
highest  that  there  was  in  him.  ...  He  was  to  scatter  the 
seed-germs  of  nobler  thinking  and  living.  .  .  .  In  Emer- 
son more  than  in  any  other  there  are  words  that  are  like 


EMERSON 

inners  leading  to  victory,   symbolical,    inspiring,  rallying, 
seconding,  and  pointing  the  way  to  our  best  endeavor. 
His  mind  acts  like  a  sun  lens  in  gathering  the  cold  pale  beams 
of  that  luminary  to  a  focus  which  warms  and  stimulates  the 
reader  in  a  surprising  manner." — John  Burroughs. 

"  In  all  he  is  the  optimist  rather  than  the  pessimist,  the 
philosopher,  not  the  mere  by-stander.  .  .  .  He  wrote 
to  Carlyle,  '  My  whole  philosophy,  which  is  very  real,  teaches 
acquiescence  and  optimism.'  He  was  an  optimist,  a  serene 
presence,  unexcited  because  confident  of  the  ultimate  result. 
Though  bitterly  attacked,  he  seldom  retorted  and  seldom 
swerved  from  his  self-confident  course." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Hast  not  thy  share  ?     On  winged  feet, 
Lo  !  it  rushes  thee  to  meet ; 
And  all  that  Nature  made  thy  own, 
Floating  in  air  or  pent  in  stone, 
Will  rive  the  hills  and  swim  the  sea, 
And,  like  thy  shadow,  follow  thee." 

— Compensation. 

"  Yet  spake  yon  purple  mountain, 
Yet  said  yon  ancient  wood, 
That  Night  or  Day,  that  Love  or  Crime, 
Leads  all  souls  to  the  good." — The  Park. 

"  How  much,  preventing  God,  how  much  I  owe 

To  the  defences  thou  hast  round  me  set  ; 
Example,  custom,  fear,  occasion  slow, — 

These  scorned  bondsmen  were  my  parapet." — Grace. 

2.  Moral  Elevation. — "  That  he  speaks  always  to  what 
is  highest  and  what  is  least  selfish  in  us,  few  Americans  of  the 
generation  younger  than  his  own  would  be  disposed  to  deny." 
— Lowell. 

"He  lives  in  the  highest  atmosphere  of  thought. 
He  is  always  in  the  presence  of  the  infinite,  and  ennobles  the 


506  EMERSON 

accidents  of  human  existence  so  that  they  partake  of  the  ab- 
solute and  eternal  while  he  is  looking  at  them." — Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes. 

"  He  is  moral  first  and  last,  and  it  is  through  his  impas- 
sioned and  poetic  treatment  of  the  moral  law  that  he  gains 
such  an  ascendancy  over  his  reader.  .  .  .  When  he  died, 
it  was  not  as  a  sweet  singer,  like  Longfellow,  who  had  gone 
silent ;  but  something  precious  and  paternal  had  gone  out  of 
nature  ;  a  voice  of  courage  and  hope  and  inspiration  to  ail 
noble  endeavor  had  ceased  to  speak.  .  .  .  He  says,  as 
for  other  things  he  makes  poetry  of  them,  but  the  moral  law 
makes  poetry  of  him." — John -Burroughs. 

"  He  has  been  a  delighted  student  of  many  literatures  and 
many  religions,  but  all  his  quotations  from  them  show  that  he 
rejects  everything  which  does  not  tend  to  cheer,  invigorate, 
and  elevate,  which  is  not  nutritious  food  for  the  healthy 
human  soul.  ...  He  drew  from  all  sources,  and  what- 
ever fed  his  religious  sense  of  mystery,  of  might,  of  beauty, 
and  of  Deity  was  ever  welcome  to  his  soul." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  His  poetry  comes  from  a  large  and  pure  nature,  and  it 
will  always  be  prized  most  by  the  readers  who  are  most  in 
sympathy  with  the  qualities  which  gain  for  the  author  the 
respect  and  the  gratitude  of  those  whose  respect  and  gratitude 
are  best  worth  having." — Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

11  He  taught  in  the  first  place  that  this  universe  is  a  spirit- 
ual universe,  a  manifestation  of  God.  .  .  .  In  one  of  his 
poems,  entitled  '  Blight,'  he  laments  the  shallow  cowardice 
of  the  age  that  contents  itself  with  mere  hearsay,  and  so  misses 
the  divine  vision  and  the  divine  life." — W.  H.  Savage. 

"  When  Emerson  wishes  to  speak  with  peculiar  terseness, 
with  unusual  exaltation,  with  special  depth  of  meaning,  with 
the  utmost  intensity  of  feeling,  he  speaks  in  poetic  form." 
— C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  With  Emerson  it  is  always  the  special  capacity  for  moral 
experience — always  that  and  only  that.  We  have  the  impres- 


EMERSON  507 

sion  somehow  that  life  had  never  bribed  him  to  look  at  any- 
thing but  the  soul." — Henry  James. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Life  is  too  short  to  waste 
In  critic  peep  or  cynic  bark, 
Quarrel  or  reprimand  ; 
'Twill  soon  be  dark  ; 
Up !  mind  thine  own  aim  and 
God  save  the  mark  !  "—ToJ.  W. 

"  Though  love  repine  and  reason  chafe, 

There  came  a  voice  without  reply, 
'  'Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe, 

When  for  the  truth  he  ought  to  die.'  " 

— Sacrifice. 

tl  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  duty  whispers  low,  *  Thou  must,' 
The  youth  replies,  '  I  can.' "  —  Voluntaries. 

3.  Individuality  —  Sincerity.  — "  Like  all  poets  and 
philosophers  who  are  classed  as  pantheists,  Emerson  had  a 
pronounced  individuality.  Throughout  his  life  he  guarded  it 
with  a  jealous  care.  He  could  never  endure  the  thought  of 
being  the  organ  of  any.  ...  In  reading  him  we  feel 
that  we  are  in  communion  with  an  original  person  as  well  as 
with  an  original  poet.  .  .  .  Nothing  that  can  be  said 
against  him  touches  his  essential  quality  of  manliness. 
How  superb  and  animating  his  lofty  intellectual  courage ! 
'  The  soul,'  he  says,  «  is  in  her  native  realm,  and  it  is  wider 
than  space,  older  than  time,  wide  as  hope,  rich  as  love.'  The 
poet's  character  was  on  a  level  with  his  lofty  thinking." — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Emerson's  ideal  is  the  man  who  stands  firm,  who  is  un- 
moved, who  never  laughs  or  apologizes  or  assents  through 
good-nature  or  goes  abroad  ;  who  is  not  afraid  of  giving  of- 


5O8  EMERSON 

fence;  who  never  answers  you  with  supplication  in  his  eye — 
in  fact,  who  stands  like  a  granite  pillar  amid  the  slough  of 
life.  ...  He  leads,  in  our  time  and  country,  one  illus- 
trious division,  at  least,  in  the  holy  crusade  of  the  affections 
and  intuitions  against  the  usurpations  of  tradition  and  theo- 
logical dogma." — John  Burroughs. 

"  By  this  individualism  was  founded  the  great  nation  in 
which  Emerson  so  thoroughly  believed,  and  upon  it  must  that 
nation  rest  in  the  future.  .  .  .  Both  in  poetry  and  in 
prose  his  influence  is  as  spontaneous  as  that  of  nature  ;  he  an- 
nounces and  lets  others  plead." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  He  represents  Thought  in  any  adjustment  of  our  poetic 
group,  and  furthermore — his  thought  being  independent  and 
emancipatory — the  American  conflict  with  superstition,  with 
servility  to  inherited  usage  and  opinion.  ...  He  has 
taught  his  countrymen  the  worth  of  virtue.,  wisdom,  and  cour- 
age, above  all,  to  fashion  life  upon  a  self-reliant  plan,  obeying 
the  dictates  of  their  own  souls.  .  .  .  Emerson  never  felt 
the  strength  of  proportion  that  compels  the  races  to  whom  art 
is  a  religion  and  a  law.  .  .  .  His  instinct  of  personality, 
not  without  a  pride  of  its  own,  made  him  a  nonconformist." 
— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Instead  of  cultivating  the  tormenting  and  enfeebling  spirit 
of  scruple,  instead  of  multiplying  precepts,  he  bade  men  not 
to  crush  out  their  souls  under  the  burden  of  Duty  ;  they  are 
to  remember  that  a  wise  life  is  not  wholly  filled  up  by  com- 
mandments to  do  and  to  abstain  from  doing.  Hence  we  have 
in  Emerson  the  teaching  of  a  vigorous  morality  without  the 
formality  of  a  dogma  and  the  deadly  tedium  of  didactics." 
— John  Morley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Seek  not  the  spirit,  if  it  hide 
Inexorable  to  thy  zeal : 
Trembler,  do  not  whine  and  chide  : 
Art  thou  not  also  real  ? 


:MERSON 


509 


Stoop  not  then  to  poor  excuse  ; 

Turn  on  the  accuser  roundly  ;  say, 

'  Here  am  I,  here  will  I  abide 

Forever  to  myself  soothfast  ; 

Go  thou,  sweet  Heaven,  or  at  thy  pleasure  stay  ! ' 

Already  Heaven  with  thee  its  lot  has  cast, 

For  only  it  can  absolutely  deal." — Sursum  Corda. 

"  I  like  a  church,  I  like  a  cowl ; 
I  love  a  prophet  of  the  soul  ; 
And  on  my  heart  monastic  aisles 
Fall  like  sweet  strains  or  pensive  smiles  ; 
Yet  not  for  all  his  faith  can  see 
Would  I  that  cowled  Churchman  be." 

—  The  Problem. 

"  Man's  the  elm,  and  Wealth  the  vine  ; 
Stanch  and  strong  the  tendrils  twine  : 
Though  the  frail  ringlets  thee  deceive, 
None  from  its  stock  that  vine  can  reave. 
Fear  not,  then,  thou  child  infirm, 
There's  no  god  dare  wrong  a  worm  ; 
Laurel  crowns  cleave  to  deserts, 
And  Power  to  him  who  power  exerts." 

— Compensation . 

4.  Conciseness  —  Condensation.  —  "  So  many  pre- 
cious sayings  enrich  his  more  sustained  poems  as  to  make 
us  include  him  at  times  with  the  complete  artists.  .  .  . 
Bacon's  elementary  essays  excepted,  there  are  none  in  English 
of  which  it  can  be  more  truly  averred  that  there  is  noth- 
ing superfluous  in  them.  .  .  .  Each  sentence  is  an  idea, 
an  epigram,  an  image,  or  a  flash  of  spiritual  light.  .  .  . 
Terseness  is  a  distinctive  feature  of  his  style.  ...  No 
one  has  compressed  more  sternly  the  pith  of  his  discourse. 
.  .  .  His  generalizations  pertain  to  the  unseen  world; 
viewing  the  actual,  he  puts  its  strength  and  fineness  alike  into 
a  line  or  an  epithet.  He  was  born  with  an  unrivalled  faculty 
of  selection.  .  .  .  Emerson  treats  of  the  principles  be- 


510  EMERSON 

hind  all  history,  and  his  laconic  phrases  are  the  very  honey- 
cells  of  thought." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Within  the  limits  of  a  single  sentence,  no  man  who  ever 
wrote  the  English  tongue  has  put  more  meaning  into  words 
than  Emerson.  In  his  hands,  to  adopt  Ben  Jonson's  vigorous 
phrase,  words  '  are  rammed  with  thought.'  .  .  .  Neither 
Greek  precision  nor  Roman  vigor  could  produce  a  phrase 
that  Emerson  could  not  match.  .  .  .  Look  through  all 
of  Emerson's  writings,  and  then  consider  whether  in  all  liter- 
ature you  can  find  a  man  who  has  better  fulfilled  that  inspira- 
tion stated  in  such  condensed  words  by  Joubert,  '  to  put  a 
whole  book  into  a  page,  a  whole  page  into  a  phrase,  and  that 
phrase  into  a  word.'  After  all,  it  is  phrases  and  words  won 
like  this  that  give  immortality." — T.  W.  Higginson. 

11  The  compactness  of  Emerson's  writings  is  apparent  to  the 
most  careless  reader.  The  quatrain  '  Teach  me  your  mood, 
O  patient  stars/  really  includes  the  thought  and  lesson  of  the 
eight  stanzas  comprising  one  of  Matthew  Arnold's  best  known 
poems.  He  gives  us  saws,  sayings,  admonitions,  flashes, 
glimpses,  few  broad  constructed  pictures.  .  .  .  The 
poems,  at  their  best,  are  more  concise  than  the  prose."  — 
C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  Our  poet  is  also  so  terse  in  expression  that  his  thoughts 
might   be   selected   out   and    printed  as  epigrams. 
Never  a  word  too  much ;  always  the  word  chosen  was  the  one 
inevitable  word." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"From  first  to  last  he  strikes  one  as  being  something 
extremely  pure  and  compact,  like  a  nut  or  an  egg.  .  -  . 
In  fact,  Emerson  is  an  essence,  a  condensation.  ...  It 
would  be  impossible  to  condense  any  of  his  essays ;  they  are 
the  last  results  of  condensation  ;  we  can  only  cut  them  up  and 
abridge  them." — John  Burroughs. 

"  Who  else  could  thus  put  eternity  into  a  nutshell?  Who 
else  could  reflect  the  universe  in  a  mirror  no  larger  than  the  pit 
of  the  eye?  "_  W.  S.  Kennedy. 


EMERSON  511 

"  You  are  dazzled  on  every  page  by  his  superabundance  of 
compactly  expressed  reflection  and  his  marvellous  command  of 
all  the  resources  of  imaginative  illustration.  Every  paragraph 
is  literally  'rammed  with  life.'  A  fortnight's  meditation  is 
sometimes  condensed  into  a  sentence  of  a  couple  of  lines. 
Almost  every  word  bears  the  mark  of  deliberate  thought  in 
its  selection.  .  .  .  That  wonderful  compactness  and  con- 
densation of  statement  which  surprise  and  charm  the  reader  of 
his  books  were  due  to  the  fact  that  he  exerted  every  faculty  of 
his  mind  in  the  act  of  verbal  expression.  A  prodigal  in  respect 
to  thoughts,  he  was  still  the  most  austere  economist  in  the  use  of 
words.  .  .  .  The  fire  in  him,  which  would  instantly  have 
dissipated  ice  into  vapor,  made  the  iron  in  him  run  molten 
and  white  hot  into  the  mould  of  his  thought  when  he  was 
stirred  by  a  great  sentiment  or  an  inspiring  insight.  It  is 
admitted  that  he  is  worthy  to  rank  among  the  great  masters  of 
expression ;  yet  he  was  the  least  fluent  of  educated  beings. 
In  a  company  of  swift  talkers  he  seemed  utterly  helpless,  until 
he  fixed  upon  the  right  word  or  phrase  to  embody  his  mean- 
ing, and  then  the  word  or  phrase  was  like  a  gold  coin,  fresh 
and  bright  from  the  mint  and  recognized  as  worth  ten  times 
as  much  as  the  small  change  of  conversation  which  had  been 
circulating  so  rapidly  around  the  table  while  he  "was  mute  or 
stammering." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Go  thou  to  thy  learned  task, 

I  stay  with  the  flowers  of  spring : 
Go  thou  of  the  ages  ask 

What  me  the  hours  will  bring." 

—  The  Botanist. 

"  The  tongue  is  prone  to  lose  the  way, 

Not  so  the  pen,  for  in  a  letter 
We  have  not  better  things  to  say, 
But  surely  say  them  better." — Life. 


$12  EMERSON 

"  Once  slept  the  world,  an  egg  of  stone, 
And  pulse  and  sound  and  light  was  none  ; 
And  God  said,  '  Throb  ! '  and  there  was  motion, 
And  the  vast  mass  became  vast  ocean." — Woodnotes. 

5.  Mysticism — Obscurity. — "  The  symbols  he  deals 
with  are  too  vast,  sometimes,  we  must  own,  too  vague,  for  the 
unilluminated  terrestrial  and  arithmetical  intelligence.  One 
cannot  help  feeling  that  he  might  have  dropped  in  upon  some 
remote  centre  of  spiritual  life  where  the  fourth  dimension 
of  space  was  as  familiarly  known  to  everybody  as  a  foot- 
measure  or  a  yard-stick  is  to  us." — Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

11  It  is,  perhaps,  due  in  part  to  the  absence  from  Mr.  Emer- 
son's genius  of  any  controlling  aesthetic  element  that  he  not 
infrequently  indulges  himself  in  mysticism,  and  makes  his 
verses  puzzles  and  enigmas  not  only  to  the  common  reader 
but  even  to  the  trained  student-  of  poetry.'* — Charles  Eliot 
Norton. 

"  It  must  be  taken  for  granted  that  Wordsworth's  experience 
was  the  result  and  record  of  genuine  insight,  and  that  it  can- 
not be  curtly  dismissed  as  '  crazy,  mystical  metaphysics '  be- 
fore Emerson  can  even  obtain  a  hearing ;  for  he  undoubtedly 
was  more  crazy  and  mystical  than  Wordsworth  cared  to  be, 
while  independently  following  in  the  path  which  Wordsworth 
had  marked  out.  ...  He  was  a  man  who  had  earned  the 
right  to  utter  these  noble  truths  by  patient  meditation  and 
clear  insight.  .  .  .  It  is  this  depth  of  spiritual  experience 
and  subtility  of  spiritual  insight  which  distinguishes  Emerson 
from  all  other  American  authors,  and  makes  him  an  element- 
ary power  as  well  as  an  elementary  thinker." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"His  intuitive  faculty  was  so  determined  that  ideality  and 
mysticism  gave  him  the  surest  promise  of  realities. 
If  a  theist,  with  his  intuition  of  an  all-pervading  life,  he 
no  doubt  felt  himself  a  portion  of  that  life ;  and  the  sense  of 
omnipresence  was  so  clearly  the  dominant  sense  of  its  attri- 
butes that  to  call  him  a  theist  rather  than  a  pantheist  is  simply 


EMERSON  513 

a  dispute  about  terms.  .  .  .  One  may  say  that  his  philo- 
sophical method  bears  to  the  inductive  or  empirical  a  relation 
similar  to  that  between  the  poetry  of  self-expression  and  the 
poetry  of  aesthetic  creation,  a  relation  of  the  subjective  to  the 
objective.  .  .  .  If  he  sought  first  principles,  he  looked 
within  himself  for  them." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  There  is  much  in  Emerson's  works  that  will  not  stand 
rigid  literary  tests;  much  that  is  too  fanciful  and  ethereal,  too 
curious  and  paradoxical — not  real  or  true,  but  only  seem- 
ingly so,  or  so  by  a  kind  of  violence  or  disruption.  .  .  . 
Not  in  the  poetry  of  any  of  his  contemporaries  is  there  such  a 
burden  of  the  mystery  of  things." — John  Burroughs. 

"  This  [a  passage  in  "  The  Celestial  Love"]  is  mysticism, 
and  the  very  romance  of  mysticism— intelligible  to  some, 
musical  to  all — and  breathing  deeply  of  Plato  and  the  Ori- 
entals."— F.  B.  Sanborn. 

"The   mystic   obscurity  of  some  of   the  poems     . 
has  discouraged  or  repelled  many  from  the  study  of  any  of 
them." — Julian  Hawthorne. 

11  Milton  says  that  poetry  ought  to  be  simple,  sensuous,  im- 
passioned. Well,  Emerson's  poetry  is  seldom  either  simple 
or  sensuous  or  impassioned.  In  general  it  lacks  directness  ;  it 
lacks  concreteness  ;  it  lacks  energy.  His  grammar  is  often 
embarrassed  ;  in  particular,  the  want  of  clearly  marked  dis- 
tinction between  the  subject  and  the  object  of  his  sentence  is 
a  frequent  cause  of  obscurity  in  him.  ,  .  .  A  poem  which 
shall  be  a  plain,  forcible,  inevitable  whole  he  hardly  ever  pro- 
duced. .  .  .  Even  passages  and  single  lines  of  thorough 
plainness  and  commanding  force  are  rare  in  his  works." — 
Matthew  Arnold. 

"  What  are  the  faults  of  Emerson  as  a  thinker  and  a  writer? 
The  most  conspicuous,  doubtless,  is  a  certain  vagueness  of 
thought  and  utterance.  .  .  .  His  very  wish  to  be  terse 
sometimes  makes  him  obscure,  and  oftener  causes  him  to  seem 
obscure." — C.  F.  Richardson. 
33 


5H  EMERSON 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thou  art  the  unanswered  question  ; 
Couldst  see  thy  proper  eye, 
Always  it  asketh,  asketh  ; 
And  each  answer  is  a  lie." — The  Sphinx. 

tl  For  Destiny  never  swerves, 

Nor  yields  to  men  the  helm, 
He  shoots  his  thought  by  hidden  nerves 
Throughout  the  solid  realm." 

—  The  World-Soul 

"  A  sad  self-knowledge,  withering,  fell 
On  the  beauty  of  Uriel ; 
In  heaven  once  eminent,  the  god 
Withdrew,  that  hour,  into  his  cloud  ; 
Whether  doomed  to  long  gyration 
In  the  sea  of  generation, 
Or  by  knowledge  grown  too  bright 
To  hit  the  nerve  of  feebler  sight."-  Uriel. 

6.  Americanism. — "  Every  American  has  something  of 
Emerson  in  him,  and  the  secret  of  the  land  was  in  the  poet — 
the  same  Americanism  that  Whitman  sees  in  the  farmer,  the 
deck-hand,  the  snag-toothed  hostler,  atoning  with  its  human- 
ities for  their  sins,  past  and  present,  as  for  the  sins  of  Harte's 
gamblers  and  diggers  of  the  gulch." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  He  was  an  American  in  no  narrow  and  sectional  spirit. 
He  was  an  idealistic  American — an  American  of  the  soul,  car- 
ing for  freedom  and  morality  and  the  seeing  mind  more  than 
for  Concord  River  or  for  Wachusett  Mountain." — G.  W. 
Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 
"  We  grant  no  dukedoms  to  the  few, 

We  hold  like  rights,  and  shall  ; — 
Equal  on  Sunday  in  the  pew, 

On  Monday  in  the  Mall, 
For  what  avail  the  plough  or  sail, 
Or  land  or  life,  if  freedom  fail  ?  " — Boston. 


EMERSON  515 

"  God  said,  '  I  am  tired  of  kings, 
I  suffer  them  no  more  ; 
Up  to  my  ear  the  morning  brings 
The  outrage  of  the  poor.' 

"  My  angel, — his  name  is  Freedom, — 
Choose  him  to  be  your  king  ; 
He  shall  cut  pathways  east  and  west 
And  fend  you  with  his  wing. 

"  Lo  !  I  uncover  the  land 
Which  I  hid  of  old  time  in  the  West, 
As  the  sculptor  uncovers  the  statue 
When  he  has  wrought  his  best ; 

"  I  show  Columbia,  of  the  rocks 
Which  dip  their  foot  in  the  seas 
And  soar  to  the  air-borne  flocks 
Of  clouds  and  the  boreal  fleece." 

— Boston  Hymn. 

7.  Appreciation  of  Nature. — "  Emerson  doubts  his 
power  to  capture  the  very  truth  of  Nature.  Its  essence — its 
beauty — is  so  elusive.  .  .  .  But  such  poems  as  the  '  Fore- 
runners '  show  how  closely  he  moved,  after  all,  upon  the  trail 
of  the  evading  sprite.  He  seemed,  by  first  intention,  and  with 
an  exact  precision  of  grace  and  aptness,  to  put  in  phrases  what 
he  saw  and  felt — and  he  saw  and  felt  so  much  more  than  oth- 
ers !  He  had  the  aboriginal  eye  and  the  civilized  sensibility  ; 
he  caught  both  the  external  and  the  scientific  truth  of  natural 
things  and  their  poetic  charm  withal.  .  .  .  Emerson's 
prose  is  full  of  poetry,  and  his  poems  are  light  and  air.  His 
modes  of  expression,  like  his  epithets,  are  imaginative." — 
E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Emerson's  poetry  of  nature  has  the  broadest  range,  from 
noon-day  sky  to  swampy  pool,  from  snow-capped  mountain  to 
skipping  squirrel  on  the  tree.  It  would  be  as  just  to  call  Em- 


5l6  EMERSON 

erson  the  poet  of  nature  as  to  apply  the  familiar  phrase  to 
Bryant.  .  .  .  But  nature  in  Emerson's  verse  is  something 
more  than  mere  prettiness.  .  .  .  The  seer  and  the  mystic 
could  treat  Nature  in  the  simplest  fashion  when  he  had  no 
other  purpose  in  view." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  He  took  his  allusions  and  his  poetic  material  from  the 
woods  and  waters  around  him,  and  wrote  fearlessly  even  of  the 
humble-bee." — T.  W.  Ifigginson. 

"  The  perception  of  beauty  in  nature  or  in  human  nature, 
whether  it  be  the  beauty  of  a  flower  or  of  a  soul,  makes  Emer- 
son joyous  and  glad  ;  he  exults  in  celebrating  it,  and  he  com- 
municates to  his  readers  his  own  ecstatic  mood.  .  .  .  The 
singular  attractiveness  of  his  writings  comes  from  his  intense 
perception  of  beauty,  both  in  its  abstract  quality  as  the  '  awful 
loveliness '  which  such  poets  as  Shelley  have  celebrated  and  in 
the  more  concrete  expression  by  which  it  fascinates  ordinary 
minds.  .  .  .  His  '  Ode  to  Beauty '  indicates  that  the 
sense  of  beauty  penetrated  to  the  inmost  centre  of  his  being 
and  was  an  indissoluble  element  in  his  character. 
The  sense  of  beauty,  indeed,  was  so  vital  an  element  in  the 
constitution  of  his  being  that  it  decorated  everything  it 
touched.  His  imaginative  faculty,  both  in  the  conception  and 
the  creation  of  beauty,  is  uncorrupted  by  any  morbid  senti- 
ment. His  vision  reaches  to  the  very  source  of  beauty — the 
beauty  that  cheers." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  An  intense  love  of  nature  and  a  keen  perception  of  the 
beauties  of  the  external  world,  are  manifested  in  every  page  of 
his  writings." — C.  C.  Felton. 

"  Both  his  poetry  and  his  prose  abound  with  lively  descrip- 
tions of  nature,  and  show  the  utmost  delight  in  every  sight 
and  sound  of  the  material  world.  .  .  .  Nature  is  shown 
not  merely  as  a  background  or  theatre  for  man's  activities  but 
as  a  source  of  beauty  and  strength,  working  with  and  for  us, 
and  always  leading  us  to  worship.  .  .  .  When  a  man  has 
a  sincere  admiration  and  awe  in  the  presence  of  the  works  of 


EMERSON  SI/ 

the  Creator  he  will  be  in  a  mood  to  estimate  Emerson  at  his 
true  value." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  His  observation  of  Nature  is  always  marvellously  close 
and  fine." — Matthew  Arnold. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  For  Nature  beats  in  perfect  time, 
And  rounds  with  rhyme  her  every  rune, 
Whether  she  work  in  land  or  sea, 
Or  hide  underground  her  alchemy. 
Thou  canst  not  wave  thy  staff  in  air, 
Or  dip  thy  paddle  in  the  lake, 
But  it  carves  the  bow  of  beauty  there, 
And  the  ripples  in  rhyme  the  oar  forsake." — Nature. 


"  Oh,  when  I  am  safe  in  my  sylvan  home, 
I  tread  on  the  pride  of  Greece  and  Rome  ; 
And  when  I  am  stretched  beneath  the  pines, 
Where  the  evening  star  so  holy  shines, 
I  laugh  at  the  lore  and  the  pride  of  man, 
At  the  sophist  schools  and  the  learned  clan, 
For  what  are  they  all,  in  their  high  conceit, 
When  man  in  the  bush  with  God  may  meet  ?  " 

—  Good-Bye. 

"  Then  I  said,  '  I  covet  truth  ; 

Beauty  is  unripe  childhood's  cheat  ; 

I  leave  it  behind  with  the  games  of  youth  : 

As  I  spoke,  beneath  my  feet 

The  ground  pine  curled  its  pretty  wreath, 

Running  over  the  club-moss  burrs  ; 

I  inhaled  the  violet's  breath  ; 

Around  me  stood  the  oaks  and  firs  ; 

Pine-cones  and  acorns  lay  on  the  ground  ; 

Over  me  soared  the  eternal  sky, 

Full  of  light  and  of  deity  ; 


5  I  c>  EMERSON 

Again  I  saw,  again  I  heard, 

The  rolling  river,  the  morning  bird  ; — 

Beauty  through  my  senses  stole  ; 

I  yielded  myself  to  the  perfect  whole." 

— Each  and  All. 

8.  Frequent   Crudity   in   Thought   and   Style.— 

"  His  verse,  often  diamond-like  in  contrast  with  the  feld- 
spar of  others,  at  times  is  ill-cut  and  beclouded.  ...  It 
becomes  a  question  whether  his  discords  are  those  of  an  un- 
developed artist  or  the  sudden  craft  of  one  who  knows  all  art 
and  can  afford  to  be  on  easy  terms  with  it.  I  think  there  is 
evidence  on  both  sides.  ...  It  should  be  noted  that 
Emerson's  vision  of  the  sublime  in  scientific  discovery  in- 
creased his  distaste  for  mere  style,  and  moved  him  to  content- 
ment with  the  readiest  mode  of  expression.  .  .  .  There 
was,  it  must  be  owned,  a  tinge  of  provincial  arrogance,  and 
there  were  expressions  a  little  less  than  ludicrous  in  his  early 
defiance  of  usage." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Not  even  Wordsworth  pressed  so  dangerously  as  did 
Emerson  at  times  the  borderland  of  what  is  bald  or  juvenile  or 
apparently  silly.  .  .  .  We  sometimes  find  art,  sometimes 
artlessness,  sometimes  deliberate  crudity.  Emerson's  reflections 
in  the  '  transcendental  mood  '  do,  beyond  question,  sometimes 
irresistibly  suggest  the  close  neighborhood  between  the  sublime 
and  the  ridiculous.  .  .  .  Emerson's  most  conspicuous  fault 
is  a  certain  vagueness  of  thought  and  utterance.  He  maun- 
ders along  in  well-balanced  sentences,  which  are  not  devoid 
of  sense,  separately,  but  which  combine  into  no  consistent  or 
valuable  whole.  It  not  infrequently  happens  that  the  whole 
is  less  than  the  sum  of  all  its  parts." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

11  He  made  desperate  work,  now  and  then,  with  rhyme  and 
rhythm,  showing  that,  though  a  born  poet,  he  was  not  a  born 
si  nger . ' ' — Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

11  Mr.  Emerson  is  still  careless  about  the  way  in  which  his 
thought  embodies  itself,  and  fails  to  guard  his  poetry  against 


EMERSON  519 

the  attacks  of  time  by  casting  his  poem  in  perfect  and  imperish- 
able forms.  ...  If  there  be  much  of  the  Greek  philoso- 
pher in  his  composition,  there  is  very  little  of  the  Greek 
artist." — Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

"  He  is  an  extravagant,  erratic  genius,  setting  all  authority 
at  defiance,  sometimes  writing  with  the  pen  of  an  angel  (if 
angels  ever  write),  and  sometimes  gravely  propounding  the 
most  amazing  nonsense." — C.  C.  Felton. 

"  Even  passages  and  single  lines  of  thorough  plainness  are 
rare  in  his  poetry.  They  exist,  of  course ;  but  when  we  meet 
them,  they  give  us  a  slight  shock  of  surprise,  so  little  has  Emer- 
son accustomed  us  to  them.  .  .  .  He  is  not  plain  and 
concrete  enough,  in  other  words,  not  poetic  enough ;  .  .  . 
and  a  failure  of  this  kind  goes  through  almost  all  his  verse, 
keeps  him  amid  symbolisms  and  allusion  and  the  fringes  of 
things  ;  and  in  spite  of  his  spiritual  power,  deeply  impairs  his 
poetic  value.  .  .  .  His  style  has  not  the  requisite  whole- 
ness of  good  tissue." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  And  why  are  these  verses — too  often  rude,  harsh,  or  fantas- 
tic— to  outlive  the  more  polished  and  melodious  poetry  of 
other  men  ?  First,  because  of  their  superior  tone.  .  .  . 
He  lamented  his  imperfect  use  of  the  metrical  faculty,  which 
he  felt  all  the  more  keenly  in  contrast  with  the  melodious 
thoughts  he  had  to  utter  and  the  fitting  words  in  which  he 
could  clothe  these  thoughts.  He  would  have  written  much 
more  in  verse  if  he  had  been  content  with  his  own  metrical 
expression  as  constantly  as  he  was  delighted  with  it  sometimes. 
But  it  is  also  true  that  he  purposely  roughened  his  work." — 
F.  B.  Sanborn. 

"  He  uses  words  that  are  not  only  odd  but  vicious  in  con- 
struction ;  he  is  not  always  grammatically  correct ;  and  he  is 
often  clumsy  ;  and  there  is  a  visible  feeling  after  epigrams  that 
do  not  always  come." — John  Morley. 


520  EMERSON 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Mighty  projects  countermanded  ; 
Rash  ambition,  broken  handed  ; 
Puny  man  and  scentless  rose 
Tormenting  Pan  to  double  the  dose." 

— Alphonso  of  Castile. 

"  The  maiden  in  danger 
Was  saved  by  the  swain  ; 
His  stout  arm  restored  her 
To  Broadway  again. 

"  The  maid  would  reward  him, — 
Gay  company  come, — 
They  laugh,  she  laughs  with  them  ; 
He  is  moonstruck  and  dumb."—  Tact. 

"  He  [Cupid]  affects  the  wood  and  wild, 
Like  a  flower-hunting  child  ; 
Buries  himself  in  summer  waves, 
In  trees,  with  beasts,  in  mines  and  caves, 
Loves  nature  like  a  horned  cow, 
Bird,  or  deer,  or  caribou." — The  Initial  Love. 

9.  Spontaneity — Lyric  Power. — "At  times  I  think 
him  the  first  of  our  lyric  poets,  his  turns  are  so  wild  and 
unexpected.  ...  He  often  captures  us  with  absolute 
beauty,  the  poetry  that  poets  love — the  lilt  and  melody  of 
Shelley — joined  to  precision  of  thought  and  outline.  .  .  . 
He  had  written  poems  of  which  the  whole  and  the  parts  were 
at  least  justly  related  masterpieces — lyrical  masterpieces. 
.  .  .  The  opening  [of  "  The  Sphinx  "]  is  strongly  lyrical 
and  impressive." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  poetry  of  Emerson  is  valued,  at  least  in  some  of  its 
parts,  both  by  those  who  find  enjoyment  in  lyrical  expression 
of  common  and  laborious  meditation  or  observation  and  by 
those  who  are  willing  to  give  to  verse  a  deep  study."-— C  F. 
Richardson. 


EMERSON  521 

"Mr.  Emerson's  poetic  genius  seems  as  little  modified 
by  conscious  will — as  simply  natural  and  inartistic — as  the 
genius  of  the  pine  or  hemlock." — Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Spring  still  makes  spring  in  the  mind 
When  sixty  years  are  told  ; 
Love  wakes  anew  this  throbbing  heart, 
And  we  are  never  old. 
Over  the  winter  glaciers 
I  see  the  summer  glow, 
And  through  the  wild.-piled  snow-drift, 
The  warm  rosebuds  below." — The  World-Soul. 

1  'Hearken!  Hearken! 

If  thou  wouldst  know  the  mystic  song 

Chanted  when  the  sphere  was  young. 

Aloft,  abroad,  the  paean  swells; 

O  wise  man  !  hear'st  thou  half  it  tells  ? 

O  wise  man  !  hear'st  thou  the  least  part  ? 

'Tis  the  chronicle  of  art. 

To  the  open  ear  it  sings 

Sweet  the  genesis  of  things, 

Of  tendency  through  endless  ages, 

Of  star  dust  and  star-pilgrimages  ; 

Of  rounded  worlds,  of  space  and  time, 

Of  the  old  flood's  subsiding  slime, 

Of  chemic  matter,  force,  and  form, 

Of  poles  and  powers,  cold,  wet,  and  warm  ; 

The  rushing  metamorphosis 

Dissolving  all  that  fixture  is, 

Melts  things  that  be  to  things  that  seem 

And  solid  nature  to  a  dream." — Woodnotes,  II. 

IO.  Precision. — "Finally,  this  poet's  scenic  joinery  is 
so  true,  so  mortised  with  the  one  apt  word,  .  .  .  and  the 
one  best  word  or  phrase  is  so  unlocked  for  that,  as  I  say,  we 
scarcely  know  whether  this  comes  by  grace  of  instinct  or  with 


522  EMERSON 

search  and  artistic  foresight.  ...  He  was  born  with  an 
unrivalled  faculty  of  selection.  .  .  .  As  he  triumphed 
over  the  untruthfulness  of  the  mere  verse-maker  and  the  dul- 
ness  of  the  moralist,  his  instant,  sure,  yet  airy  transcripts 
gave  his  poems  of  nature  a  quality  without  a  counterpart. 
.  .  .  Over  and  over  again,  he  asserted  his  conviction  that 
every  word  should  be  the  right  word." — £.  C.  Stedman. 

"  His  subtle  selective  instinct  penetrates  the  vocabulary  for 
the  one  word  he  wants,  as  the  long  slender  bill  of  those  birds 
(the  tenui-rostrals)  dives  deep  into  the  flower  for  its  drop  of 
honey. ' '  —  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

"  Neither  Greek  precision  nor  Roman  vigor  could  produce 
a  phrase  that  Emerson  could  not  match." — T.  W.  Higginson. 

11  His  own  pride  is  always  to  have  the  ready  change,  to 
speak  the  exact  and  proper  word,  to  give  to  every  occasion 
the  dignity  of  wise  speech." — John  Burroughs. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  prosperous  and  beautiful 

To  me  seem  not  to  wear 
The  yoke  of  conscience  masterful, 

Which  galls  me  everywhere." — The  Park. 

"  The  housemates  sit 
Around  the  radiant  fireplace,  enclosed 
In  a  tumultuous  privacy  of  storm." 

—  The  Snow -Storm. 

"  Thy  trivial  harp  will  never  please 
Or  fill  my  craving  ear ; 
Its  chords  should  ring  as  blows  the  breeze, 
Free,  peremptory,  clear. 
No  jingling  serenader's  art, 
Nor  tinkle  of  piano  strings, 
Can  make  the  wild  blood  start 
In  its  mystic  springs. 


EMERSON  523 

The  kingly  bard 

Must  smite  the  chords  rudely  and  hard, 

As  with  hammer  or  with  mace." — Merlin. 

ii.  Suggestiveness  —  Intellectuality.  —  Emerson 
himself  well  defines  this  characteristic  of  his  own  style,  when 
he  says:  "  The  most  interesting  writing  is  that  which  does 
not  quite  satisfy  the  reader.  Try  and  leave  a  little  thinking 
for  him  ;  that  will  be  better  for  you  both.  The  trouble  with 
most  writers  is  they  spread  too  thin.  The  reader  is  as  quick 
as  they ;  has  got  there  before  them,  and  is  ready  and  waiting. 
A  little  guessing  does  him  no  harm,  so  I  would  assist  him 
with  no  connection.  If  you  can  see  how  the  harness  fits,  so 
can  he.  But  make  sure  that  you  can  see  it." 

"  He  has  the  immense  advantage  of  suggesting  something 
new  to  the  diligent  reader  after  he  has  read  him  for  the  fiftieth 
time.  .  .  .  His  sentences  have  furnished  texts  for  ser- 
mons ;  his  paragraphs  have  been  expanded  into  volumes,  and 
open  minds,  representing  every  variety  of  creed,  have  gladly 
appropriated  and  worked  out,  after  their  own  fashion,  hints 
and  impulses  derived  from  the  creedless  thinker  and  seer." — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  The  essays  cannot  be  said  to  contain  any  system  of  relig- 
ion, morals,  or  philosophy.  The  most  that  can  be  affirmed 
is  that  they  are  full  of  significant  hints  upon  all  these  subjects, 
from  which  the  author's  opinions,  if  he  had  any,  may  be  in- 
ferred . " — C.  C.  Felton . 

"  We  look  upon  him  as  one  of  the  few  men  of  genius  whom 
our  age  has  produced,  and  there  needs  no  better  proof  of 
it  than  his  masculine  faculty  of  fecundating  other  minds." 
— Lowell. 

"From  that  time  I  have  never  ceased  to  read  Emerson's 
works ;  and  whenever  I  take  up  a  volume,  it  seems  to  me  as  if 
I  were  reading  it  for  the  first  time.  .  .  .  He  sometimes 
makes  wonderfully  simple  observations,  which  yet  disentangle 
the  most  intricate  trains  of  thought." — Grimm. 


524  EMERSON 

"His  poetry  is  interesting,  it  makes  one  think;  but  it  is 
not  the  poetry  of  one  of  the  born  poets.  I  say  it  of  him  with 
reluctance,  because  I  dislike  giving  pain  to  his  admirers." 
— Matthew  Arnold. 

"Even  in  his  poems  that  apparently  run  rapidly  on,  each 
line  is  packed  with  thought."  —  C.  F.  Richardson. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Can  rules  or  tutors  educate 
The  semigod  whom  we  await  ? 
He  must  be  musical, 
Tremulous,  impressional, 
Alive  to  gentle  influence 
Of  landscape  and  of  sky, 
And  tender  to  the  spirit  touch 
Of  man's  or  maiden's  eye." — Culture. 

"  Open  innumerable  doors, 
The  heaven  where  unveiled  Allah  pours 
The  flood  of  truth,  the  flood  of  good, 
The  Seraph's  and  the  Cherub's  food. 
Those  doors  are  men  ;  the  Pariah  hind 
Admits  them  to  the  perfect  Mind." — Saadi. 

"  Hast  thou  named  all  the  birds  without  a  gun  ? 
Loved  the  wood-rose  and  left  it  on  its  stalk  ? 
At  rich  men's  tables  eaten  bread  and  pulse? 
Unarmed,  faced  danger  with  a  heart  of  trust? 
And  loved  so  well  a  high  behavior 
In  man  or  maid,  that  thou  from  speech  refrained, 
Nobility  more  nobly  to  repay  ? 
O,  be  my  friend,  and  teach  me  to  be  thine." 

— Forbearance. 

12.  Transcendentalism. — "Against  materialism  Em- 
erson preached  a  spiritual,  self-centred  idealism.  But  still  an- 
other element  was  present  in  all  that  he  taught.  It  was  the 


EMERSON  525 

element  of  reverential  communion  with  nature  and  with  the 
spirit  from  which  nature  came  and  under  which  it  works. 
At  its  worst  and  vaguest,  this  spirit  of  Transcendentalism  was 
akin  to  a  loose  and  profitless  Pantheism ;  at  its  best,  it  was  a 
helper  of  the  highest  and  truest  thing  in  humanity,  its  spirit- 
ual part.  He  restated  for  the  modern  world  the  eternal  prin- 
ciples of  transcendentalism,  of  spiritualism,  of  the  inner  light, 
never  lost  since  the  days  of  Plato." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  There  is  always  the  idea  of  soul,  central  and  pervading, 
of  which  Nature's  forms  are  but  the  created  symbols.  .  .  . 
Few  have  had  Emerson's  inward  eye,  but  it  is  well  that  some 
have  not  been  restricted  to  it.  ...  His  voice  comes 
'  like  a  falling  star  '  from  a  skyey  dome  of  pure  abstraction. 
If  a  theist,  with  his  intuition  of  an  all-pervading 
life,  he  no  doubt  felt  himself  a  portion  of  that  life,  and  the 
sense  of  omnipresence  was  so  clearly  the  dominant  sense  of  its 
attributes  that  to  call  him  a  theist  instead  of  a  pantheist  is 
merely  a  dispute  about  terms.  .  .  .  One  may  say  that 
his  philosophical  method  bears  to  the  inductive  or  empirical 
a  relation  similar  to  that  between  the  poetry  of  self-expression 
and  the  poetry  of  aesthetic  creation,  a  relation  of  the  subjec- 
tive to  the  objective.  .  .  .  If  he  sought  first  principles, 
he  looked  within  himself  for  them.  ...  I  think  that  the 
weakness  of '  transcendental'  art  is  as  fairly  manifested  in  Em- 
erson's first  and  chief  collection  of  verse  as  were  its  felicities. 
.  .  .  It  is  true  that  he  was  not  the  prince  of  transcenden- 
talists  but  the  prince  of  idealists.  .  .  .  Emerson,  a  man 
of  our  time,  while  a  transcendentalist,  looking  inward  rather 
than  to  books  for  his  wisdom,  studied  well  the  past,  and  earlier 
sages  were  the  faculty  of  his  school." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Human  personality  presented  itself  to  Emerson  as  a  pass- 
ing phase  of  universal  being.  .  .  .  Born  of  the  Infinite, 
to  the  Infinite  it  was  to  return.  Sometimes  he  treats  his  own 
personality  as  interchangeable  with  objects  in  nature — he 
would  put  it  off  like  a  garment  and  clothe  himself  in  the  land- 


526  EMERSON 

scape.  .  .  .  The  difference  between  Emerson's  poetry 
and  that  of  his  contemporaries,  with  whom  he  would  be  nat- 
urally compared,  is  that  of  algebra  and  arithmetic.  He  deals 
largely  in  general  symbols,  abstractions,  and  infinite  series. 
He  is  always  seeing  the  universal  in  the  particular." — Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes. 

"  I  contrasted  the  coolness  of  this  transcendentalist,  when- 
ever he  discussed  matters  relating  to  the  conduct  of  human 
life,  with  the  fury  of  delusion  under  which  merchants  of  es- 
tablished reputation  sometimes  seemed  to  be  laboring  in  their 
mad  attempts  to  resist  the  operations  of  the  natural  laws  of 
trade."— E.  P.  Whipple. 

1 '  Mr.  Emerson  is  a  transcendentalist  whose  nervous  energy 
has  been  exalted,  and  whose  viscera  and  animal  spirits  have 
been  burnt  away." — Edward  Dowden. 

11  He  liked  to  explain  the  transcendentalists,  but  did  not 
care  at  all  to  be  explained  by  them." — Henry  James. 

"Mr.  Emerson  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  any  class, 
though  he  has  strong  affinities  with  the  transcendentalists." 
—C.  C.  Felton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Is  it  that  my  opulent  soul 

Was  mingled  from  the  generous  whole  ; 
Sea-valleys  and  the  deep  of  skies 
Furnished  several  supplies  ; 
And  the  sands  whereof  I'm  made 
Draw  me  to  them,  self-betrayed  ?  " 

— Ode  to  Beauty. 

"  Onward  and  on,  the  eternal  Pan, 
Who  layeth  the  world's  incessant  plan, 
Halteth  never  in  one  shape, 
But  forever  doth  escape, 
Like  wave  or  flame,  into  new  forms 
Of  gem  and  air,  of  plants  and  worms." 

—  Woodnotes,  II. 


EMERSON  527 

"  If  thou  trowest 
How  the  chemic  eddies  play, 
Pole  to  pole,  and  what  they  say ; 
And  that  these  gray  crags 
Not  on  crags  are  hung, 
But  beads  are  of  a  rosary 
On  prayer  and  music  strung  ; 
And,  credulous,  through  the  granite  seeming, 
Seest  the  smile  of  Reason  beaming  ; — 
Can  thy  style-discerning  eye 
The  hidden-working  Builder  spy, 
Who  builds,  yet  makes  no  chips,  no  din, 
With  hammer  soft  as  snowflakes  flight ; — 
Knowest  thou  this  ? 
O  pilgrim,  wandering  not  amiss! 
Already  my  rocks  lie  light, 
And  soon  my  cone  will  spin." — Monadnoc. 

13.  Lack  of  Logical  Sequence. — "This  was  Emer- 
son's method — not  to  write  a  perfect  poem,  a  poem  that 
should  be  an  inevitable  whole,  .  .  .  but  to  write  the 
perfect  line,  to  set  the  imagination  ablaze  with  a  single 
verse,  leaving  the  effects  of  form,  of  proportion,  to  be 
achieved  by  those  who  were  equipped  for  it." — -John  Bur- 
roughs. 

4 *  They  [Emerson's  poems]  are  too  naked,  unrelated,  and 
cosmic ;  too  little  clad  with  the  vesture  of  human  associations. 
.  Everything  is  thrown  in  just  as  it  comes,  and  some- 
times the  pell-mell  is  enough  to  persuade  us  that  Pope  did  not 
exaggerate  when  he  said  that  no  one  qualification  is  so  likely 
to  make  a  good  writer  as  the  power  of  rejecting  his  own 
thoughts.  ...  *  Can  you  tell  me,'  asked  one  of  his 
neighbors,  while  Emerson  was  lecturing,  '  what  connection 
there  is  between  that  last  sentence  and  the  one  that  went  be- 
fore it,  and  what  connection  it  all  has  with  Plato?  '  *  None, 
my  friend,  save  in  God,'  was  the  reply.  .  .  .  As  he  says 
of  Landor,  his  sentences  are  cubes  which  will  stand  firm, 


528  EMERSON 

place  them  how  or  where  you  will.  .  .  .  One  of  the 
traces  that  every  critic  notices  in  Emerson's  writings  is  that  it 
is  so  abrupt,  so  sudden  in  its  transitions,  so  discontinuous,  so 
inconsecutive."— John  Morley. 

"  Incompleteness — want  of  beginning,  middle,  and  end — is 
their  [Emerson's  poems]  too  common  fault." — Oliver  Wen- 
dell Holmes. 

"There  is  a  certain  impression  left  on  the  mind  of  Emer- 
son's readers  which  may  be  described  as  fragmentary. 
Philosophers  and  prophets  do  not  feel  bound  to  produce  epics 
in  twelve  books  or  dramas  in  five  acts  or  even  blank  verse 
poems  fifty  pages  long.  When  Emerson  had  had  his  say  in 
verse  he  stopped.  .  .  .  Emerson  as  a  writer  has  been 
compared  to  that  minister  who  gradually  filled  a  barrel  with 
separately  written  pages  and  picked  out  enough  for  a  sermon 
when  Sunday  came.  Again,  it  has  been  said  that  Emerson's 
essays  would  read  as  well  backward  as  forward,  sentence  by 
sentence.  ...  In  poetry,  as  in  prose,  Emerson  prepared 
his  bits  of  material  when  he  would,  and  afterward  elaborated 
them  into  symmetrical  wholes  at  leisure  or  fit  occasion." — 
C.  F.  Richardson. 

"Emerson  cannot,  I  think,  with  justice  be  called  a  great 
philosophical  writer.  He  cannot  build;  his  arrangement  of 
philosophical  ideas  has  no  progress  in  it,  no  evolution ;  he 
does  not  construct  a  philosophy.  .  .  .  Emerson  himself 
formulates  perfectly  the  defect  of  his  own  philosophical  pro- 
ductions when  he  speaks  of  his  '  formidable  tendency  to  the 
lapidary  style.'  '  I  build  my  house  of  bowlders,'  he  says 
again,  '  with  very  little  system,  and  as  regards  composition, 
with  most  fragmentary  results;  paragraphs  incompressible, 
each  sentence  an  infinitely  repellent  particle.'  Nothing  can 
be  truer." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"It  [a  certain  lecture]  was  as  if,  after  vainly  trying  to  get 
his  paragraphs  into  sequence  and  order,  he  had  tried  at  last 
the  desperate  expedient  of  shuffling  them.  It  was  chaos  come 


EMERSON  529 

again,  but  it  was  a  chaos  full  of  shooting  stars,   a  jumble  of 
creating  forces. ' '  — Lowell. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  fate  of  the  man-child, 
The  meaning  of  man  ; 
Known  fruit  of  the  unknown  ; 
Daedalian  plan  ; 
Out  of  sleeping  a  waking, 
Out  of  waking  a  sleep  ; 
Life  death  overtaking ; 
Deep  underneath  deep  ?  " — The  Sphinx. 

"  Mine  and  yours  ; 
Mine,  not  yours. 
Earth  endures  ; 
Stars  abide — 
Shine  down  in  the  old  sea  ; 
Old  are  the  shores  ; 
But  where  are  the  old  men  ? 
I  who  have  seen  much, 
Such  have  I  never  seen." — Hamatreya. 

"  The  rhyme  of  the  poet 

Modulates  the  king's  affairs  ; 

Balance-loving  Nature 

Made  all  things  in  pairs. 

To  every  foot  its  antipode  ; 

Each  color  with  its  counter  glowed  ; 

To  every  tone  beat  answering  tones, 

Higher  or  graver  ; 

Flavor  gladly  blends  with  flavor  ; 

Leaf  answers  leaf  upon  the  bough  ; 

And  match  the  paired  cotyledons." — Merlin. 


34 


BRYANT,  1794-1878 

Biographical  Outline. — William  Cullen  Bryant,  born 
November  3,  1794,  in  Cummington,  Mass.  ;  father  a  skilful 
physician  and  surgeon,  of  fine  literary  and  musical  taste  and 
some  knowledge  of  Greek,  Latin,  and  French,  who  was  for 
several  years  a  member  of  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  ; 
mother  a  woman  of  remarkably  sensitive  moral  judgment; 
Bryant  is  precocious  as  a  child,  but  nervous,  puny,  and  deli- 
cate ;  in  1797  the  family  remove  to  Plainfield,  a  village  near 
Cummington,  but  return  in  1798  to  a  farm  near  Cummington 
owned  by  Bryant's  maternal  grandfather  ;  owing  to  the  ab- 
sence of  schools  in  the  vicinity,  Bryant,  with  his  six  brothers 
and  sisters,  receives  his  early  education  mainly  from  his  par- 
ents, who  provided  for  their  children  such  books  as  the  works 
of  Hume,  Plutarch,  Shakespeare,  and  nearly  all  the  acknowl- 
edged classic  English  writers  of  that  day;  Pope,  Cowper, 
Spenser,  and  Wordsworth  seem  to  have  been  Bryant's  early 
favorites  ;  he  once  told  Parke  Godwin  that,  while  yet  a  boy,  he 
had  read  "The  Faerie  Queene  "  many  times  through;  the 
children  of  the  family  were  subjected  to  severe  Puritan  disci- 
pline, and  corporal  punishment  was  common  ;  Bryant  worked 
with  his  brothers  on  the  grandfather's  farm  during  the  sum- 
mer ;  there  was  little  society,  and  all  communication  with  the 
outside  world  was  made  on  horseback ;  while  living  at  Cum- 
mington Bryant  attends  a  district  school,  where  he  masters 
the  common  branches,  and  is  faithfully  drilled  in  the  cate- 
chism ;  he  is  also  taught  the  rudiments  of  Latin  and  French 
by  his  father  ;  Bryant  begins  to  make  verses  in  his  eighth 
year,  and,  at  ten,  delivers  before  his  school  an  address  written 

530 


BRYANT  531 

in  heroic  couplets,  which  is  published  in  the  county  paper 
and  is  used  as  a  stock  piece  for  recitation  in  other  schools  ;  he 
is  asked  by  his  grandfather  to  versify  the  first  chapter  of  Job, 
and  continues •  till  he  has  versified  the  whole  narrative;  Bry- 
ant's early  poetic  efforts  are  ridiculed  by  his  father,  but  he 
continues,  and  his  account  in  verse  of  the  eclipses  of  1806  is 
still  preserved  ;  later  he  wins  his  father's  favor  by  an  apostro- 
phe in  verse  to  Jefferson,  severely  satirizing  that  statesman, 
who  was  intensely  disliked  by  the  Federalist  physician  ;  this 
satire  of  over  five  hundred  lines  was  published  in  Boston  in 
1808  by  Bryant's  father  in  pamphlet  form  under  the  title 
"  The  Embargo,  or  Sketches  of  the  Times  ;  a  Satire  by  a 
Youth  of  Thirteen  ;  "  the  first  edition  was  exhausted  in  a  year, 
and  in  1809  appeared  "  a  second  edition,  corrected  and  en- 
larged, together  with  the  Spanish  Revolution  and  Other  Po- 
ems. By  William  Cullen  Bryant ;  "  about  this  time  Bryant 
also  writes  a  creditable  metrical  version  of  David's  lament  over 
Saul  and  Jonathan,  his  first  effort  in  blank  verse. 

In  November,  1808,  he  goes  to  reside  with  his  uncle,  the 
Rev.  Thomas  Snell,  at  Brookfield,  Mass.,  and  there  begins 
preparation  for  college ;  he  soon  develops  ability  to  read  diffi- 
cult Latin,  and,  at  his  father's  request,  renders  parts  of  the 
"^Eneid"  into  English  verse;  he  begins  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
« '  Romance  of  the  Forest, ' '  but  is  dissuaded  by  his  uncle,  who 
tells  him  that  such  works  have  "  an  unwholesome  influence  ;  " 
he  has  Amasa  Walker  as  a  fellow-student  under  Dr.  SnelPs  in- 
struction ;  in  eight  months  Bryant  reads  all  of  the  "  ^Eneid," 
the  "  Eclogues,"  the  "  Georgics,"  and  Cicero's  "  Orations  ;  " 
he  spends  the  summer  of  1809  working  in  the  hayfield  on 
his  grandfather's  farm,  and  is  reproved  for  resting  from  his 
work  to  "  make  varses  ;  "  in  August,  1809,  Bryant  goes  to 
the  Rev.  Moses  Hallock,  of  Plainfield,  Mass.,  to  learn  Greek, 
and  pays  one  dollar  a  week  for  board  and  tuition  ;  he  makes 
such  rapid  progress  that,  as  he  says,  "  At  the  end  of  two 
calendar  months  I  knew  the  Greek  New  Testament  from 


532  BRYANT 

end  to  end  almost  as  if  it  had  been  English  ;  "  he  returns  to 
Cummington  late  in  October,  1809,  and  there  continues  his 
college  preparatory  studies  during  the  winter  without  a  tutor ; 
in  the  spring  of  1810  he  returns  for  a  time  to  Plainfield,  where 
he  is  instructed  in  mathematics  by  Hallock  ;  in  September, 
1 8 10,  Bryant  attends,  with  his  father,  the  Commencement 
exercises  at  Williams  College,  and  easily  passes  examinations 
admitting  him  as  a  Sophomore. 

He  enters  Williams  October  8,  1810  ;  at  that  time  the  col- 
lege Faculty  consisted  of  the  president,  one  professor,  and  two 
tutors;  Bryant  says  in  his  "Autobiography:  "  "I  mastered 
the  daily  lesson  given  out  to  my  class,  and  found  much  time 
for  miscellaneous  reading,  for  disputations  [in  a  literary  so- 
ciety], and  for  literary  composition  in  prose  and  verse  ;  "  in 
the  summer  of  1811,  before  the  close  of  his  first  year  at  Will- 
iams, Bryant,  influenced  by  the  example  of  his  room-mate, 
John  Avery,  decides  to  enter  Yale,  obtains  from  Williams  an 
honorable  dismissal,  and  returns,  in  May,  1811,  to  his  home 
at  Cummington,  where  he  studies  to  prepare  himself  for  enter- 
ing the  Junior  Class  at  Yale  ;  however,  for  financial  reasons, 
his  father  finds  it  impossible  to  send  the  son  to  Yale,  and  so 
Bryant's  college  career  is  comprised  in  the  part  of  a  year  at 
Williams,  which  he  afterward  regretted  leaving  ;  while  study- 
ing at  home  at  this  period  he  becomes  interested  in  his  father's 
medical  books,  and  acquires  from  them  a  considerable  knowl- 
edge of  chemistry  and  botany — "  meantime  I  read  all  the 
poetry  that  came  in  my  way  ;  ' '  while  at  Williams  he  had 
rendered  Anacreon's  "  Ode  on  Spring  "  with  such  merit  that 
his  college-mates  mistook  it  for  Moore's,  with  which  they 
compared  it,  both  being  unsigned  ;  he  continues  his  Greek 
studies  after  leaving  college,  making  translations  in  prose 
from  Lucian  and  in  verse  from  Anacreon,  Mimnernus,  Colo- 
phon, Bion,  and  Sophocles  ;  Bryant  also  now  renews  his  long 
rambles  in  field  and  forest,  and,  inspired  by  Kirk  White's 
"  Melodies  of  Death,"  he  writes  ' '  Thanatopsis, "  beginning 


BRYANT  533 

the  first  sketch  with  the  line,  "  Yet  a  few  days,"  etc.  ;  "  Than- 
atopsis  "  was  written  in  October,  1811,  but  the  manuscript 
was  carefully  hidden  in  Bryant's  father's  desk,  without  being 
subjected  to  criticism  or  inspection. 

Bryant  was  originally  intended  for  the  practice  of  medicine 
— the  profession  of  his  ancestors  for  three  generations — but 
later  his  father  decided  to  make  him  a  lawyer,  and  in  Decem- 
ber, 1811,  the  son  enters  the  law  office  of  one  Mr.  Howe,  of 
Worthington,  Mass.;  he  studies  with  fair  diligence,  but  con- 
tinues to  versify  and  botanize ;  he  is  strongly  inspired  by 
reading  Wordsworth's  "Lyrical  Ballads,"  but  his  legal  pre- 
ceptor warns  him  against  such  reading  as  a  "sad  waste  of 
time;"  during  1812-13  Bryant  writes  but  one  poem,  a 
Fourth  of  July  ode,  written  at  the  request  of  a  Boston  society, 
made  through  Bryant's  father  ;  while  at  Worthington,  Pryant 
is  fascinated  by  the  daughter  of  a  distinguished  friend  of  his 
father's,  and  writes  fragments  of  love- verses  (never  published), 
but  the  relationship  is  soon  broken  off;  in  June,  1814,  he 
removes  to  the  law  office  of  Mr.  William  Baylies,  of  Bridge- 
water,  Mass.,  a  much  larger  town  than  Worthington  ;  he  is 
most  eager  to  finish  his  legal  course  in  Boston,  but  his  father's 
financial  circumstances  will  not  permit  it ;  Bryant  devotes 
himself  closely  to  study  at  Bridgewater,  determining,  as  he 
wrote  to  a  friend,  "  to  tune  the  rural  lay  no  more, 
but  leave  the  race  of  bards  to  scribble,  starve,  and  freeze;  " 
he  writes  another  Fourth  of  July  ode  in  1814,  deploring  our 
war  with  England  and  denouncing  Napoleon  ;  he  is  entrusted 
with  the  business  of  the  office  during  the  absence  of  his  pre- 
ceptor in  Congress  ;  he  passes  the  preliminary  test  for  ad- 
mission to  the  bar  August  9,  1814;  in  correspondence  with 
his  preceptor  at  this  time,  Bryant  manifests  a  warm  interest 
in  public  affairs  ;  he  even  proposes  to  enter  the  army,  but  an 
attack  of  pulmonary  disease  compels  him  to  go  home  and 
spend  the  month  of  November  at  Cummington  ;  during  the 
intense  political  struggle  of  the  day  Bryant  becomes  a  rabid 


534  BRYANT 

Federalist,  and  speaks  of  President  Madison  as  "his  imbe- 
cility;"  he  proposes  to  join  the  State  militia,  "being 
ashamed  to  stay  at  home  when  everybody  besides  was  gone, ' ' 
and  foreseeing,  he  thinks,  a  civil  war ;  he  is  appointed  an  ad- 
jutant in  the  Massachusetts  militia  in  July,  1816,  but  the 
Peace  of  Ghent  causes  his  services  to  be  uncalled  for. 

He  passes  his  final  legal  examination  and  is  admitted  to  the 
Court  of  Common  Pleas  August  15,  1815;  at  this  time  he 
again  devotes  himself  to  a  minute  study  of  nature,  and  sketches 
several  nature  poems;  he  writes  "The  Yellow  Violet  "  just 
before  his  admission  to  the  bar,  and  the  "  Inscription  for  the 
Entrance  to  a  Wood  "  about  the  same  time;  in  December, 
1815,  on  his  way  to  Plainfield,  Mass.,  where  he  proposed  to 
settle  as  a  lawyer,  he  sees  a  wild  duck  flying  homeward  and, 
while  walking,  composes  the  lines  "  To  a  Waterfowl ;  "  after 
remaining  eight  months  at  Plainfield,  he  removes  to  Great 
Barrington,  Mass.,  where  he  becomes  a  partner  of  one  G.  H. 
Ives  ;  soon  afterward  he  suffers  a  second  attack  of  pulmonary 
disease  ;  he  is  urged  by  his  father  to  contribute  in  prose  or 
verse  to  the  North  American  Review,  then  recently  estab- 
lished in  Boston  and  edited  by  Phillips,  a  friend  of  Bryant's 
father ;  but  Bryant  does  not  respond,  having  apparently  re- 
solved to  abandon  the  muses  ;  meanwhile  the  father  discovers 
the  manuscript  of  "  Thanatopsis  "  and  himself  carries  it  to 
Phillips  ;  R.  H.  Dana,  then  one  of  the  owners  of  the  Review, 
declares  the  manuscript  an  imposture  and  says,  "  No  one  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  is  capable  of  writing  such  verses  ;  ' ' 
' '  Thanatopsis ' '  was  first  published  in  the  North  American 
Review  for  September,  1817,  and  was  then  prefixed  with  four 
stanzas  on  death,  found  by  Bryant's  father  with  the  manu- 
script, but  having  no  connection  with  the  poem  and  not  in- 
tended by  Bryant  for  publication  ;  this  forbidding  introduction 
prevented  "  Thanatopsis  "  from  attracting  much  attention  at 
first  except  from  the  critics,  who  still  supposed  it  to  have  been 
written  by  Bryant's  father;  in  July,  1818,  Bryant  publishes 


BRYANT  535 

in  the  Review  an  essay  on  American  poetry,  being  a  review 
of  a  collection  of  American  verses  then  just  published  ;  in  this 
article  he  "  dismisses  the  poetical  pretensions  of  the  rhymers 
who  were  then  in  vogue  ;  "  in  1819  he  publishes  in  the  Re- 
view an  essay  on  "  Trisyllabic  Feet  in  Iambic  Verse." 

While  in  Great  Harrington  he  holds  successively  the  offices 
of  tithing-man,  town-clerk,  and  Justice  of  the  Peace;  his 
father  dies  of  pulmonary  disease  in  March,  1820;  early  in 
1820  Bryant  promises  to  contribute  several  hymns  to  a  Uni- 
tarian collection  then  forming  ;  later  he  delivers  at  Stock- 
bridge,  Mass.,  a  Fourth  of  July  oration,  in  which  he  makes 
his  first  public  protest  against  slavery  ;  during  1820  he  also 
contributes  to  The  Idle  Man  (a  periodical  then  just  established 
by  Dana)  "  The  Yellow  Violet  "  and  "  Green  River,"  the 
latter  poem  having  been  picked  out  of  his  waste-basket  ;  later 
he  contributes  to  the  same  periodical  "A  Winter  Piece," 
"  The  West  Wind,"  "  The  Burial  Place,"  and  "  A  Walk  at 
Sunset  ;  "  during  1820  Bryant  becomes  betrothed  to  Miss 
Fanny  Fairchild,  the  orphaned  daughter  of  a  well-to-do 
farmer  living  near  Great  Barrington,  and  they  are  married  at 
that  village  June  n,  1821  ;  soon  after  his  marriage  Bryant 
is  invited  to  deliver  the  usual  poetical  address  before  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  society  of  Harvard  University  at  the  next  Com- 
mencement ;  he  complies,  and  reads  at  Harvard,  August  20, 
1821,  the  poem  entitled  "  The  Ages  ;  "  while  in  Boston  he 
first  meets  the  Danas,  the  Channings,  and  other  prominent 
people,  and  has  in  his  audience  Allston,  both  the  Adamses, 
the  Quinceys,  Story,  Webster,  and  Edward  Everett ;  while 
there  he  also  yields  to  the  importunity  of  Dana  and  others, 
and  prepares  for  publication  a  pamphlet  of  forty-four  pages, 
containing  eight  of  the  best  of  his  poems,  namely  :  "  The 
Ages,"  "  To  a  Waterfowl,"  "  A  Fragment  from  Simonides," 
"  An  Inscription  for  an  Entrance  to  a  Wood,"  "  The  Yellow 
Violet,"  "Green  River,"  "The  Song,"  and  " Thanatopsis " 
— "  such  poems  as  had  never  appeared  before  in  American  lit- 


536  BRYANT 

erature  ;  "  the  same  year  (1821)  gave  birth  to  some  of  the 
best  productions  of  Cooper,  Irving,  Halleck,  Dana,  Percival, 
Channing,  and  Webster  ;  Bryant's  pamphlet  received  recogni- 
tion in  Blackwood's  Magazine ;  he  is  urged  by  Dana  and  others 
to  write  a  long  poem,  but  he  refuses,  insisting  that  "  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  long  poem  ;  "  in  1823  he  writes  a  farce,  satir- 
izing the  practice  of  duelling,  then  common  at  the  South  ;  it 
is  submitted  for  criticism  to  Henry  Sedgwick,  who  advises 
against  publication,  but  incidentally  urges  Bryant  to  settle  in 
New  York  and  to  become  a  contributor  to  the  Atlantic  Maga- 
zine, then  published  there;  Bryant  accordingly  visits  New 
York  on  a  tour  of  inspection  in  April,  1824,  and  there  meets 
Cooper,  Halleck,  and  Sparks  ;  during  1823-25  he  contributes 
to  the  then  newly  established  United  States  Literary  Gazette 
(Boston)  nearly  thirty  poems,  including  "  Monument  Moun- 
tain," "  November,"  "  To  a  Cloud,"  "The  Lapse  of  Time," 
"A  Forest  Hymn,"  "March,"  "The  Rivulet,"  "Autumn 
Woods,"  and  "  After  the  Tempest ;  "  for  such  work  Bryant 
asks  but  $2  a  poem,  but  the  editor  offered  him  $200  a  year  for 
an  average  of  one  hundred  lines  a  month  ;  his  profits  on  his 
first  book  of  poems  are  less  than  $15  ;  to  the  same  magazine, 
at  the  same  time,  an  unknown  writer  signing  himself  "  H.  W. 
L."  contributes  several  poems,  as  does  Percival  ;  the  pub- 
lishers of  the  Gazette  soon  afterward  issue  a  volume  of  "  Mis- 
cellaneous Poems,"  including  the  work  of  all  three  poets  ; 
about  this  time  Bryant  begins  but  never  finishes  a  longer  nar- 
rative poem  entitled  "The  Spectre  Ship;  "  he  writes  also 
numerous  reviews  of  American  literature  current  at  the  time. 

Although  he  is  successful  and,  by  1824,  has  argued  cases 
before  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts,  he  continually 
manifests  a  disposition  to  leave  law  for  literature  ;  he  visits 
New  York  again  in  January,  1825,  meets  many  literary  men, 
and  an  attempt  is  made  to  found  a  new  magazine  with  Bryant 
as  editor,  but  the  project  fails,  partially  because  he  is  a  Uni- 
tarian ;  he  returns  to  New  York  in  March,  1825,  when  The 


BRYANT  537 

Atlantic  Magazine  and  The  Literary  Review  are  merged  into 
The  New  York  Review,  with  Bryant  as  joint  editor  with  H. 
J.  Anderson,  former  editor  of  The  Atlantic  Magazine  ;  Bryant 
leaves  his  family  in  Great  Barrington,  and  takes  lodgings  in 
New  York,  but  is  joined  by  his  family  in  the  autumn  ;  in 
April,  1825,  he  delivers  before  the  Athenaeum  Society  of  New 
York  four  lectures  on  Poetry;  during  the  winters  of  1827, 
1828,  1829,  and  1831,  he  lectures  on  Mythology  before  the 
then  newly  formed  National  Academy  of  Arts  ;  meantime  he 
publishes  in  his  New  York  Review  his  poems  entitled  "  The 
Song  of  Pitcairn's  Island,"  "  The  Skies,"  "Lines  on  Re- 
visiting a  Cemetery,"  "  I  Cannot  Forget,"  "To  a  Mos- 
quito," "  The  Death  of  the  Flowers,"  "  The  New  Moon," 
"A  Hymn  to  Death,"  "An  Indian  Girl's  Lament,"  and 
"A  Meditation  on  Rhode  Island  Coal,"  besides  many  prose 
articles,  chiefly  critical  ;  the  Review  changes  names  twice 
during  1826,  and  gradually  expires ;  meantime  Bryant  takes 
out  a  license  to  practise  in  the  courts  of  New  York,  and  does 
some  legal  work  in  connection  with  Henry  Sedgwick  ;  dur- 
ing the  summer  of  1826  he  becomes  temporarily  editor  of  the 
Evening  Post,  pending  the  decision  of  Dana,  to  whom  the 
editorship  had  been  offered ;  he  acts  as  subordinate  editor 
during  1827  and  1828,  finding  the  work,  at  least  financially, 
"better  than  poetry  and  magazines;"  during  1828,  1829, 
and  1830  he  edits  an  annual  called  "The  Talisman,"  to 
which  he  contributes  his  poems  entitled  "To  the  Past," 
"The  Evening  Wind,"  and  several  others ;  on  the  death  of 
the  chief  editor  and  owner  of  the  Evening  Post,  in  July,  1829, 
Bryant  becomes  chief  editor  and  a  partial  owner ;  he  strongly 
supports  President  Jackson,  and  once  inflicts  corporal  chastise- 
ment on  a  political  adversary ;  he  writes  almost  no  poetry 
from  1829  to  1835  ;  in  1831  he  publishes  a  volume  contain- 
ing eighty  poems — all  he  had  written  since  his  pamphlet  of 
1821;  this  volume  serves  to  place  Bryant,  in  the  opinion 
(then  expressed)  of  critics  like  Longfellow  and  Prescott,  "  at 


538  BRYANT 

the  head  of  our  poetic  literature;  "  through  the  good  offices 
of  Irving,  then  living  in  England,  Bryant's  poems  are  re- 
printed in  London  in  March,  1832,  with  a  dedication  (written 
by  Irving)  to  Samuel  Rogers ;  the  volume  is  well  received  in 
England,  being  highly  praised  by  Professor  Wilson  in  Black- 
wood 's  Magazine. 

During  the  spring  of  1832  Bryant  visits  his  brothers,  who 
had  settled  in  Illinois,  and,  while  there,  accidentally  meets 
Lincoln,  then  "a  tall,  awkward,  uncouth  lad,"  leading  a 
company  of  volunteers  to  the  Blackhawk  Indian  War ;  on  his 
return  he  settles  with  his  family  in  Hoboken,  N.  J.,  to  avoid 
the  cholera,  then  raging  in  New  York,  but  he  remains  at  his 
post  as  editor  throughout  that  terrible  summer  ;  he  warmly 
supports  President  Jackson's  Union  proclamation  in  Decem- 
ber, 1832  ;  he  also  supports  Jackson  in  his  memorable  struggle 
against  the  United  States  Bank,  and  thus  incurs  much  popular 
hostility;  he  visits  Canada,  with  his  wife,  in  1833;  early  in 
1834  Bryant  and  his  paper  are  frequently  threatened  with 
violence  by  anti-abolition  mobs  ;  he  sails  for  France,  June  24, 
1834,  spends  several  weeks  in  Paris,  Lyons,  and  Marseilles, 
and  goes  thence  to  Italy,  where  he  remains  four  months, 
chiefly  at  Rome,  Naples,  Florence,  and  Pisa ;  thence  by  the 
Tyrol  to  Munich  for  three  months,  and  thence  to  Heidelberg  for 
four  months  ;  he  meets  Longfellow  in  Heidelberg,  and  reaches 
home  March  26,  1836;  on  his  return  he  declines  a  public 
dinner  offered  him  by  Irving,  Halleck,  and  others,  and  begins 
his  life-long  struggle  for  international  copyright;  in  1836  he 
publishes  another  edition  of  his  poems,  this  time  through  the 
Harpers,  and  receives  $125  for  the  first  twenty-five  hundred 
copies ;  he  grows  weary  of  journalism  and  of  city  life,  and 
seriously  proposes  to  remove  to  the  prairies  of  Illinois ;  he 
becomes  unpopular  by  his  editorial  opposition  to  "  fiat  money," 
usury  laws,  and  the  slave-trade,  and  suffers  some  social  ostra- 
cism ;  he  first  meets  Parke  Godwin  in  1836,  and  soon  afterward 
employs  him  as  an  assistant  editor;  in  1837  Bryant  opposes 


BRYANT  539 

the  attitude  of  his  friend,  President  Van  Buren,  toward  slavery, 
but  supports  his  financial  policy;  in  August,  1837,  he  is 
challenged  to  a  duel  by  one  Holland,  an  editor  of  the  Times, 
but  avoids  the  trouble  by  a  skilful  reply ;  in  his  long  walks 
about  New  York  he  becomes  "  a  most  indefatigable  tramp  ;  " 
he  frequently  entertains  Cooper,  Halleck,  Longfellow,  and 
Audubon,  and  brings  out  Dana's  "Two  Years  before  the 
Mast  "  after  the  manuscript  has  been  repeatedly  rejected  ;  he 
vigorously  satirizes  "the  singing  campaign"  of  Harrison  in 

1840  ;  during  the  summer  he  roams  through  the  Catskills  with 
Cole,  the  artist,  and  with  Cole  names  many  of  the  wild  points 
in  that  region  (see  Bryant's  poem  "  The  Catterskill  Falls  ")  ; 
he  incurs  popular  hostility  for  refusing  to  put  his  paper  into 
mourning  dress  on  the  death  of  Harrison  ;  in  the  spring  of 

1841  he  again  visits  Illinois,  where  the  wolves  were  still  howl- 
ing on    the  prairies  ;  in  1842    he   vigorously  opposes  "  the 
black   tariff,"    and    both  lectures   and  writes   in  support  of 
homoeopathy ;    during  February  of  this  year  he  is  formally 
entertained  at  a  breakfast  given  in  his  honor  by  Dickens, 
whose  first  inquiry  after  landing  was,  "  Where  is  Bryant?" 
Bryant  afterward  entertains  Dickens  at  his  own  home,  and 
later  publishes,  at  the  request  of  Dickens,  the  address  of  the 
latter  to  the  American  people  in  favor  of  international  copy- 
right ;  during  1842  Bryant  also  prepares  a  new  volume  of  his 
poems,  the  Harpers  having  then  sold  five  editions  of  the  earlier 
volume;    the  new    volume  includes   "The  Painted    Cup," 
"The   Antiquity    of  Freedom,"    "The    Fountain,"    "An 
Evening  Reverie,"  and  sixteen  others  written  since  his  return 
from  Europe  ;  in  the  spring  of  1843  he  makes  a  tour  through 
the  South,  spends  a  month  among  the  cotton-planters  of  South 
Carolina,  listening  to  their  defence  of  their  favorite  "  Institu- 
tion," and  then  revels  in  the  delights  of  a  tropical  spring  in 
Florida  ;  during  the   same  spring  he   buys  "  forty  acres  of 
solid   earth     ...     on  the  north  side  of  Long    Island," 
to  which  he  gives  the  name  of  Roslyn,  for  a  country  home. 


540  BRYANT 

111  the  summer  of  1843  Bryant  joins  David  Dudley  Field 
and  others  in  publishing  a  manifesto  against  the  annexation  of 
Texas  ;  he  sails  again  for  Europe,  April  22,  1845,  in  company 
with  Charles  Leupp,  an  artist  friend;  he  lands  at  Liverpool, 
visits  James  Martineau,  and  reaches  London  in  June;  he  is 
given  a  public  dinner  in  London  by  Edward  Everett,  then  our 
British  Minister,  and  meets  there  Samuel  Rogers,  Monckton 
Milnes,  Thomas  Moore,  and  other  literary  lights  ;  later  he 
meets  Cobden,  Bright,  Fox,  Hallam,  Lyell,  Whewell,  Fara- 
day, and  Herschel  (the  last  five  at  Cambridge)  ;  Bryant  takes 
up  his  residence  at  Leamington,  whence  he  makes  long  pedes- 
trian and  carriage  tours  to  Oxford,  Blenheim,  Warwick,  etc. ; 
he  meets  Wordsworth  at  Windermere  in  July,  being  presented 
by  Crabbe  Robinson ;  he  goes  thence  to  Edinburgh,  Ireland, 
London,  and  Paris ;  thence  by  way  of  the  Netherland  cities 
to  Heidelberg,  Nuremberg,  Leipsic,  Berlin,  Dresden,  Prague, 
Vienna,  Trieste,  Venice,  Florence,  Rome,  Naples,  Genoa, 
Milan,  walking  over  the  Simplon  by  moonlight,  and  so  to 
Geneva  and  back  to  Paris  and  London  (see  his  "  Letters  of 
Travel  ")  ;  he  returns  to  New  York  and  to  his  home  at  Roslyn 
in  November,  1845;  during  1845-46  Bryant  writes  ''The 
Stream  of  Life,"  ''The  Unknown  Way,"  and  "  The  Wander- 
ing Moon,"  and  prepares  a  new  edition  of  his  older  poetry, 
first  submitting  all  his  poems  to  the  criticism  of  his  friend 
Dana,  with  the  intention  of  omitting  from  the  new  edition 
any  disapproved  by  Dana ;  Bryant  adopts  most  of  Dana's 
suggestions  and,  by  his  advice,  omits  none  of  the  poems  ; 
during  the  year  1846  he  again  visits  his  mother  and  brothers  in 
Illinois,  and  returns  by  way  of  Lake  Michigan  and  Mackinaw  ; 
the  new  volume  of  poems  appears  in  December,  and  is  received 
with  unabated  public  favor;  during  1846,  Bryant  also  begins 
his  correspondence  with  Longfellow;  in  May,  1847,  he  loses 
his  mother,  to  whom  he  refers  in  the  poem  beginning  "  May 
Sun  sheds  an  amber  light." 

During  the  summer  of  1847   he  vists  Boston,  Portland, 


BRYANT  541 

Augusta,  and  the  White  Mountains,  which  he  declares  equal 
to  those  of  Switzerland  except  for  the  snow-capped  peaks  ;  on 
May  4,  1848,  Bryant  delivers,  by  invitation  of  the  Academy 
of  Design,  a  glowing  eulogy  on  his  friend  Thomas  Cole, 
the  artist;  in  the  summer  of  1848  he  joins  with  the  editors 
of  several  other  prominent  journals  in  a  call  for  a  conven- 
tion of  "  all  who  are  in  favor  of  free  soil,  free  speech,  free 
labor,  and  free  men,"  and  later  he  becomes  a  fervent  sup- 
porter of  Van  Buren  in  his  presidential  campaign  ;  early  in 
1849  Bryant  secures  John  Bigelow  as  an  assistant  editor  of 
the  Post,  and  thus  obtains  more  leisure  for  travel ;  he  starts 
for  Cuba  in  March,  1849,  stopping  in  South  Carolina  and 
Florida,  and  reaching  Havana  April  yth;  spends  a  month  in 
Cuba,  where  the  treatment  of  the  slaves  greatly  intensifies  his 
feeling  against  the  "institution;"  soon  after  returning  to 
New  York  he  starts,  June  13,  1849,  on  a  third  trip  to  Europe, 
again  having  Leupp  as  a  companion ;  he  spends  much  time 
in  the  public  and  private  picture  galleries  of  London  ;  thence 
to  the  Orkney  and  Shetland  Islands  by  way  of  Edinburgh 
and  Perth,  and  thence  to  the  Continent,  which  he  finds 
"  filled  with  soldiers  ;  "  to  Munich  by  way  of  Stuttgart,  thence 
to  Switzerland,  and  back  to  New  York  in  December ;  soon 
after  his  return  he  publishes,  at  the  request  of  G.  P.  Putnam, 
a  volume  of  his  letters  of  travel,  written  from  Illinois,  Mack- 
inaw, the  South,  Cuba,  and  Europe;  he  devotes  much  time 
to  the  improvement  of  his  estate  at  Roslyn,  to  which  he 
becomes  devotedly  attached  ;  in  1850  he  strongly  opposes 
Henry  Clay's  "Compromise  Measure." 

In  February,  1852,  at  the  request  of  the  New  York  His- 
torical Society,  Bryant  delivers  an  address  on  Cooper,  then 
lately  deceased,  Webster  being  the  presiding  officer  on  the 
occasion,  and  Irving  one  of  the  guests;  in  1852,  becoming 
disgusted  with  the  indifference  of  the  Free  Soil  party  toward 
slavery  and  the  tariff,  Bryant  supports  Pierce  in  his  presi- 
dential campaign  ;  late  in  this  year  he  abandons  Pierce,  and 


542  BRYANT 

becomes  a  warm  supporter  of  the  Free  Soil  movement  in 
Kansas;  in  November,  1852,  he  sails  for  the  Orient,  with 
Leupp  again  as  a  companion  ;  while  passing  through  London 
he  meets  "a  blue-stocking  lady  who  writes  for  the  West- 
minster Review,  named  Evans,  and  a  Mr.  Spenser,  a  book- 
seller ;  "  he  is  in  Paris  on  the  day  of  the  proclamation  of  the 
second  empire ;  thence,  by  way  of  Lyons,  Marseilles,  Genoa, 
Naples,  and  Malta,  to  Alexandria  ;  thence  to  Cairo  and  up  the 
Nile  as  far  as  the  first  Cataract ;  thence  on  camel-back  across 
"  the  little  desert,"  reaching  Jerusalem  February  13,  1853;  he 
visits  Nazareth,  Tyre,  Damascus,  etc.,  and  crosses  from  Beyrut 
to  Constantinople;  thence  to  Smyrna,  Athens,  Corinth, 
Trieste,  Venice,  etc.,  back  to  Paris,  and  reaches  home  in 
June,  1853,  completely  disguised  in  a  long  white  beard,  and 
"  begins  grinding  at  the  mill  again  "  (see  his  "  Letters  from 
the  East");  late  in  1854  he  issues  another  volume  of  his 
poems,  this  time  through  the  Appletons,  who  become  his  pub- 
lishers thenceforth. 

In  1854—55  he  takes  an  active  part  in  forming  the  Repub- 
lican Party  ;  he  continues  his  support  of  the  Kansas  Free  Soil 
movement,  and  supports  Fremont  in  the  campaign  of  1856; 
he  starts,  with  his  wife,  on  a  fifth  voyage  to  Europe,  May  7, 
1857,  hoping  thus  to  improve  her  health;  they  visit  Paris, 
Heidelberg,  southern  France,  and  Spain,  where  Bryant  meets 
Emilio  Castelar;  on  reaching  Naples  he  is  detained  four 
months  by  Mrs.  Bryant's  illness ;  while  there  he  reads  much 
Italian  literature,  and  writes  "The  Sick  Bed,"  "The  River 
by  Night,"  "  The  Life  that  Is,"  and  "  A  Day  Dream  ;"  he 
revisits  Rome,  and  there  first  familiarly  meets  Hawthorne  ;  he 
meets  him  again  at  Florence  at  the  home  of  the  Brownings, 
where  both  were  guests ;  he  meets  Landor  also  at  Florence, 
and  later  renews  at  Paris  his  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
Brownings;  while  in  Paris  he  declines  a  proffered  appoint- 
ment as  one  of  the  Regents  of  the  University  of  the  State  of 
New  York;  he  returns  to  this  country  September  9,  1858, 


BRYANT  543 

with  Mrs.  Bryant  improved  in  health;  during  the  summer  of 
1859  he  foresees  the  seriousness  of  the  impending  war,  and 
predicts  the  erection  of  a  monument  to  John  Brown  within 
ten  years  ;  he  presides  on  the  occasion  of  Lincoln's  first  speech 
in  New  York,  and  afterward  supports  him  as  a  nominee  for 
the  presidency;  during  1859,  saddened  by  the  loss  of  several 
friends,  he  writes  "  The  Cloud  on  the  Way,"  "  Waiting  by  the 
Gate,"  "The  New  and  Old,"  and  "The  Third  of  Novem- 
ber;" during  1860,  impressed  by  the  deaths  of  Humboldt, 
Macaulay,  Irving,  Prescott,  DeQuincey,  and  others,  he  writes 
"The  Constellations;"  April  3,  1860,  he  delivers  a  eulogy 
on  Irving,  at  the  request  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society, 
and  is  followed  by  Edward  Everett ;  he  is  made  a  member  of 
the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  in  1861  ;  in  the  autumn 
of  1860  he  visits  friends  in  western  Maryland,  where  he  finds 
Lincoln  flags  flying;  during  the  summer  of  1860  he  supports 
Lincoln  against  Seward  for  the  presidential  nomination,  and 
writes  to  Lincoln  after  the  nomination,  urging  him  to  "make 
no  speeches,  .  .  .  enter  into  no  pledges,"  etc.;  after 
Lincoln's  election  he  strongly  urges  the  selection  of  Chase  as 
Secretary  of  State;  he  also  approves  of  Welles  and  opposes 
Cameron  as  members  of  the  Cabinet;  he  has  an  interview  with 
Lincoln  on  his  way  to  his  inaugural ;  he  vigorously  opposes 
the  ideas  of  compromise  suggested  after  the  first  battle  of  Bull 
Run;  early  during  the  Civil  War  he  writes  "Not  Yet,"  a 
poem  addressed  to  Southern  sympathizers  in  Europe,  and 
"  Our  Country's  Call,"  which  greatly  aided  Lincoln  in  his 
appeal  for  recruits. 

Early  in  1861  Bryant  expresses  himself  in  favor  of  emanci- 
pation, and  presides  at  a  New  York  emancipation  meeting 
addressed  by  Owen  Lovejoy ;  he  approves  Fremont's  procla- 
mation of  freedom  in  August,  1861  ;  he  becomes  an  intimate 
counsellor  of  Secretary  Chase,  and  strongly  opposes  the  issue 
of  "greenbacks,"  urging  instead  a  uniform  banking  system, 
based  on  government  securities  and  a  system  of  direct  taxa- 


544  BRYANT 

tion,  and  clearly  foretelling  the  evil  that  has  since  resulted 
from  the  "  greenback"  issue;  he  also  remonstrates  with 
Lincoln,  vehemently  urging  him  not  to  sign  the  bill  to  issue 
the  United  States  legal  tender  notes  ;  he  also  remonstrates 
against  the  tardiness  of  McClellan  ;  in  a  personal  visit  to 
Lincoln,  at  Washington,  in  August,  1862,  he  opposes  the  idea 
of  centralizing  our  troops  against  Richmond ;  during  the 
winter  of  1862-63  ne  seeks  relief  from  the  horrors  of  war  by 
writing  his  fairy  poems,  "  Sela,"  "  The  Little  People  of  the 
Snow,"  and  an  incomplete  poem  entitled  "  A  Tale  of  Cloud- 
land ;  "  in  July,  1863,  he  aids  in  defending  the  Evening  Post 
building  during  the  "  draft  riots;  "  later  in  the  same  winter 
he  writes  "  The  Poet  "  and  "  The  Path,"  and  begins,  at  first 
in  a  fragmentary  way,  his  great  translation  of  Homer;  he 
publishes  his  translation  of  the  Fifth  Book  of  the  '  <  Odyssey ' '  in 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  later  collects  his  more  recent  poems, 
including  this  translation  and  "  The  Rain  Dream,"  into  a  vol- 
ume with  the  title  "Thirty  Poems;"  during  1863  he  also 
writes  "The  Return  of  the  Birds"  and  "  My  Autumn  Walk  ;  " 
although  these  poems  express  a  love  of  peace,  Bryant  vehe- 
mently opposes  the  talk  of  compromise  after  Gettysburg, 
and  as  vehemently  condemns  any  attempt  to  punish  free 
speech  on  either  side ;  in  October,  1864,  he  contributes  to  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  the  poem  "My  Autumn  Walk,"  with  the 
note,  "  Ask  me  for  no  more  poetry.  .  .  .  Nobody  in  the  years 
after  seventy  can  produce  anything  in  poetry  save  the-  thick 
and  muddy  last  running  of  the  cask  from  which  all  the  clear 
and  sprightly  liquor  has  been  already  drawn;  "  as  his  views 
on  finance  and  emancipation  gradually  prove  to  have  been 
correct,  Bryant  and  his  paper  become  more  widely  popular ; 
Godwin  declares  that,  during  the  war,  the  income  from  the 
Post  for  a  year  was  a  considerable  fortune ;  Bryant  spends 
large  amounts  in  charity  and  in  the  improvement  of  Roslyn, 
planting  there  every  known  tree  and  shrub  that  the  soil  and 
climate  would  permit ;  his  seventieth  birthday,  November  3, 


BRYANT  545 

1864,  is  widely  celebrated,  and  is  publicly  commemorated  by 
the  Century  Club  of  New  York,  an  organization  of  which 
Bryant  had  been  one  of  the  founders  ;  Bancroft,  Bayard  Tay- 
lor, Holmes,  Emerson,  Stoddard,  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Whit- 
tier,  and  many  others  take  part,  and  Lowell  writes  for  the 
occasion  "Our  Bard  of  Seventy-six." 

Early  in  1865  Bryant  addresses  to  the  soldiers  of  the  Union 
Army  an  open  letter,  commending  them  for  their  work  Curing 
1864  ;  about  the  same  time  he  also  urges  strongly  a  constitu- 
tional amendment  abolishing  slavery  throughout  the  United 
States  ;  on  the  death  of  Lincoln  Bryant  is  strongly  urged  by 
Whittier,  Holmes,  and  others  to  prepare  a  memoir  of  Lincoln, 
but  he  declines  on  the  ground  that  he  is  too  near  Lincoln,  in 
time,  to  write  impartially  ;  in  the  summer  of  1865  he  declines 
to  write  a  poem  for  the  Commencement  of  Williams  College, 
declaring  that  "  youth  is  the  time  for  such  imprudences  ;  " 
about  the  same  time  he  writes  his  poem  entitled  "  The  Death 
of  Slavery,"  which  has  been  called  the  nation's  hymn  of 
thanksgiving  ;  in  the  summer  of  1865  he  buys  the  old  farm 
and  homestead  at  Cummington,  Mass.,  where  he  was  born, 
and  remodels  it  for  a  summer  home,  hoping  thus  to  improve 
his  wife's  failing  health;  he  invites  all  his  relatives  from  Illi- 
nois to  be  present  at  the  ceremony  of  "  hanging  the  pot,"  but 
Mrs.  Bryant  dies  at  Roslyn  July  27,  1866,  before  ever  taking 
possession  of  the  new  house ;  during  1866  Bryant  vigorously 
advocates  liberal  treatment  of  the  seceding  States,  and  insists 
on  federal  protection  of  the  negroes  in  their  civil  rights  ;  vis- 
iting Cummington  in  October,  1866,  he  writes  there  his  lines 
entitled  "October,  1866,"  and  soon  afterward  starts  on  his 
sixth  trip  to  Europe,  with  his  second  daughter,  Julia,  as  a  com- 
panion ;  about  the  same  time  he  decides  to  seek  relief  from  his 
great  sorrow  in  completing  his  translation  of  Homer  ;  he  buys 
a  pocket  edition  of  the  Greek  poet,  and  sets  himself  the  task  of 
forty  lines  a  day  ;  he  spends  several  weeks  in  southern  France, 
Spain,  and  Italy,  and  meets  Lord  Lytton  and  Garibaldi  while  in 
35 


546  BRYANT 

Florence ;  after  several  months  in  Rome  they  return  to  Paris 
by  way  of  Munich  and  the  principal  German  cities,  and  thence 
through  England  to  Roslyn  September  9,  1867  ;  Bryant  passes 
most  of  the  succeeding  autumn  and  winter  "  trifling  with  Ho- 
mer ;  "  he  is  tendered  a  public  dinner  in  New  York,  January 
30,  1868,  by  the  Free  Trade  League,  of  which  he  had  long 
been  president ;  he  continues  his  translation  of  Homer  during 
1878,  consulting  other  translations  only  on  questions  of  con- 
struction ;  in  February,  1869,  he  prepares  and  reads  before 
the  New  York  Historical  Society  an  address  on  Halleck,  who 
died  in  1867  ;  in  June,  1869,  he  responds  to  a  toast  at  the 
Alumni  dinner  of  Williams  College ;  during  1868-69  ne  writes 
the  hymns  "  A  Brighter  Day,"  "  Among  the  Trees,"  and  "  A 
May  Evening, ' '  and  collects  and  publishes  his  "Letters  from  the 
East ;  "  he  completes  his  translation  of  the  "  Iliad  "  January  4, 
1870;  Volume  I.  is  published  February  19,  and  Volume  II. 
June  15,  1870  ;  while  reading  the  proofs  Bryant  discovers  that 
some  lines  have  been  omitted,  and  so  he  revises  the  whole 
work,  comparing  line  by  line  with  the  original ;  the  "  Iliad  " 
proves  to  be  a  popular  success  ;  during  1870  he  assists  in  pre- 
paring the  anthology  entitled  "  A  Library  of  Poetry  and  Song," 
his  work  consisting  mainly  in  revising  the  selections  made  by 
assistant  editors,  rejecting  several,  and  suggesting  some  poems; 
he  begins  translating  the  "  Odyssey  "  in  July,  1870  ;  he  com- 
pletes the  first  book  of  the  "  Odyssey  "  in  April,  1871,  and  the 
second  before  the  close  of  that  year ;  Volume  I.  of  the  "  Odys- 
sey "  was  published  September  20,  1871,  and  Volume  II.  Sep- 
tember 20.  1872  ;  Bryant  also  makes  several  public  addresses 
during  1871  ;  in  his  later  years  he  spends  the  winter  in  New 
York  City,  the  spring  and  early  summer  at  Roslyn,  and  the  late 
summer  at  Cummington  ;  during  most  of  his  life  he  rises  at  half- 
past  five,  or  before,  in  winter,  and  at  five  o'clock  in  summer;  he 
begins  his  day  regularly  with  an  hour  or  more  of  vigorous  exer- 
cise with  light  dumb-bells,  etc.  ;  while  in  New  York  he  walks 
at  least  six  miles  a  day  •"  whatever  the  weather  or  the  state  of  the 


BRYANT  547 

streets  ;  "   he  uses  neither  tobacco,  tea,  nor  coffee,  very  little 
meat,  and  less  wine. 

In  January,  1872,  accompanied  by  his  daughter,  his  brother 
John,  and  other  friends,  he  sails  for  Nassau,  and  thence,  after 
two  weeks,  to  Havana,  where  he  receives  public  attentions ; 
thence,  late  in  February,  to  Mexico,  where  he  is  made  a  mem- 
ber of  learned  societies,  and  inspects  many  early  historical  rec- 
ords ;  after  several  weeks  in  Mexico,  the  party  return  by  way 
of  Havana  and  New  Orleans,  and  reach  home  in  April,  1873  ; 
in  the  summer  of  1873  he  erects  for  his  native  town  of  Cum- 
mington  a  public  library  building,  which  he  stocks  with  six 
thousand  carefully  selected  volumes  ;  during  this  year  he  often 
walks  eighteen  miles  a  day  about  Cummington ;  during  the 
winter  of  1872— 73,  at  the  request  of  the  publisher,  Mr.  Putnam, 
he  collects  an  edition  of  his  orations  and  speeches ;  with  his 
daughter,  Mrs.  Godwin,  he  visits  Florida  late  in  the  winter  of 
1873  ;  during  that  year  he  and  Longfellow  are  made  members 
of  the  Russian  Academy,  Tennyson  being  the  only  other  con- 
temporary poet  then  holding  that  honor  ;  he  speaks  at  Prince- 
ton College  in  July,  1873,  and  makes  several  public  addresses 
during  1874;  his  eightieth  birthday,  November  3,  1874,  is  hon- 
ored by  many  friends,  especially  in  Chicago  and  New  York,  an 
elaborate  silver  vase  commemorative  of  Bryant's  life  being  pre- 
sented in  New  York  ;  during  1875  he  revises  his  Anthology,  and 
undertakes  a  new  edition  of  Shakespeare,  aided  by  E.  A.  Duy- 
ckinck;  though  knowing  Shakespeare's  plays  almost  by  heart, 
Bryant  re-reads  them  all  and  compares  carefully  the  various 
editions  then  existing  ;  owing  to  delay  with  the  illustrations, 
this  work  was  not  published  during  Bryant's  lifetime ;  early 
in  1875  he  calls  a  meeting  in  New  York  to  protest  against  the 
invasion  of  the  legislature  of  Louisiana  by  the  federal  forces, 
and  addresses  it  "with  the  vehemence  and  fire  of  a  man  of 
thirty;  "  later  he  is  officially  entertained  at  Albany  by  his  old 
friend  Samuel  J.  Tilden,  then  recently  elected  Governor ;  Bry- 
ant retains  his  power  of  memory — almost  as  marvellous  as  that 


548  BRYANT 

of  Macaulay — till  his  latest  days  ;  early  in  December,  1875, 
he  entertains  at  Roslyn  Lord  Houghton  (Monckton  Milnes)  ; 
about  the  same  time  he  writes  "  Christmas  in  1875  "  and  "  A 
Life-Time;  "  during  1876  he  writes  the  hymn  for  the  Phila- 
delphia Centennial  Exposition,  and  assists  in  entertaining  the 
Emperor  Dom  Pedro  of  Brazil ;  during  1877  he  takes  part  in 
ceremonies  connected  with  the  erection  of  a  monument  to 
Halleck,  and  speaks  at  the  Commencement  exercises  of  La- 
Fayette  College;  during  1878,  his  last  year,  he  keeps  up  his 
long  walks,  speaks  at  many  public  meetings,  and  is  more  viva- 
cious and  cheerful  than  ever  before  in  his  life;  on  May  29, 
1878,  he  delivers,  at  Central  Park,  New  York,  a  speech  at  the 
unveiling  of  a  monument  to  Mazzini ;  while  speaking  he  exposes 
himself  to  the  sun,  and,  soon  afterward,  on  entering  the  home 
of  an  acquaintance  near  the  Park,  he  falls  and  seriously  injures 
his  head  ;  he  remains  in  a  semi-conscious  condition  till  his 
death,  in  his  New  York  home,  June  12,  1878. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF   CRITICISM   ON   BRYANT. 

Whipple,    E.    P.,    "American    Literature."      Boston,    1887,    Ticknor, 

36-39. 
Stedman,  E.  C,  "Poets  of  America."     Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mif- 

flin  &  Co.,  62-95. 
Symington,  A.  J.,    "William  Cullen  Bryant,  a  Biographical  Sketch." 

New  York,  1880. 
Godwin,    P.,    "Biography  of   William  Cullen    Bryant."      New   York, 

1883,  Appleton,  v.  index. 
Saunders,    F.,    "Character  Studies."      New  York,    1891,    Whittaker, 

133-152. 
Tuckerman,  H.  T.,  " Thoughts  on  the  Poets."     Boston,  1846,  Francis, 

303-318. 

Taylor,  B.,  "Critical  Essays."     New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  258-277. 
Godwin,  P.,  "Out  of  the  Past."     New  York,  1870,  Putnam,  9-22. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  "Works."     New  York,  1855,  Redfield,  3:   178-188. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,    "Essays  and  Reviews."     Boston,    1873,  Osgood,    i: 

52-53- 

Bigelow,   J.,    "William  Cullen   Bryant."      Boston,    1890,    Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.,  v.  index. 


BRYANT  549 

Hill,  D.  J.,  "William  Cullen  Bryant."     New  York,    1879,   Sheldon  & 

Co.,  v.  index. 
Osgood,   S.,    "  Bryant  Among  his  Countrymen."      New   York,    1879, 

Putnam,  1-32. 
Wilson,  J.  G.,    "Bryant  and  His  Friends."     New  York,   1886,   Fords, 

Howard  £  Hulbert,  v.  index 
Wilson,   J.,    "Essays,    Critical   and  Imaginative."     Edinburgh,    1856, 

Blackwood,  191-223. 

Bartlett,  D.  W.,  "  Modern  Agitators."  Auburn,  N.Y.,  Miller,  183-191. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."  New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

2=   35-49- 
Lowell,   J.  R.,    "A  Fable   for   Critics."     (Poetical   Works.)     Boston, 

1890,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  113-151. 
Whittier,  J.  G.,  "Poetical  Works."  Boston,  1892,   Houghton,     Mifflin 

&  Co.,  468. 
Shepard,   W.  S.,    "The  Literary  Life."      New  York,    1886,    Putnam, 

98  119. 

Lippincotfs  Magazine,  44:   698-712  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Unitarian  Review,  33  :   346-357  (J.  Benton). 
Dial  (Chicago),  ii:   31-33  (O.  F.  Emerson). 
Critic,  3  :    101-102  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Nation,  36  :   366-367  (A.  G.  Sedgwick). 
Appleton's  Journal,  6 :  477-480  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  42 :   747-748  (E.  C.  Stedman). 
North  American  Revinv,  55:   500-510  (G.  S.  Hillard). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

.  Dignity  —  Reserve  —  Elevation  —  Serenity.— 

"  His  general  tone  toward  society  is  harsh.  In  his  poems  he 
continually  speaks  of  escaping  from  the  crowd,  of  despising 
the  frivolity  of  society,  of  hating  the  every-day  work  by  which 
man,  in  this  life,  keeps  up  that  interesting  and  slightly  im- 
portant connection  between  body  and  soul  called  '  getting  a 
living.'  .  .  .  As  a  poet,  his  nature  is  not  broad,  sensi- 
tive, and  genial,  but  intense,  serious,  and  deep.  He  appears 
rather  to  have  for  it  [the  real  concrete  life  of  the  nation]  a 
subtle  and  supercilious  antipathy,  when,  as  a  poet,  he  gives 
himself  up  to  the  influences  of  nature.  .  .  .  The  healing 
power  there  is  in  Bryant's  philosophic  meditation  on  life,  the 


BRYANT 

fine  avenues  through  which  his  thought  penetrates  to  what  is 
deepest  in  the  soul,  and  the  beautiful  serenity  he  not  only 
feels  but  communicates,  are  all  well  illustrated  in  his  poem  on 
<  The  Return  of  Youth.'  "—£.  P.  Whipple. 

"His  sentiment  was  unsentimental;  he  never  whined  nor 
found  fault  with  condition  or  nature ;  he  was  robust,  but  not 
tyrannical ;  frugal,  but  not  too  severe ;  grave,  but  full  of 
humor.  .  .  .  The  delights  of  nature  and  meditations  on 
the  universality  of  life  and  death  withdrew  him  from  the  study 
of  the  individual  world.  .  .  .  The  most  fervent  social 
passions  of  his  song  are  those  of  friendship,  of  filial  and  fra- 
ternal love  ;  his  intellectual  passion  is  always  under  restraint, 
even  when  moved  by  patriotism,  liberty,  religious  faith."— 
E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  There  is  Bryant,  as  quiet,  as  cool,  and  as  dignified, 
As  a  smooth,  silent  iceberg,  that  never  is  ignified, 
Save  when  by  reflection  'tis  kindled  o'  nights 
With  a  semblance  of  flame  by  the  chill  Northern  Lights." 

— Lowell. 

"  This  steady  flow  of  thought  and  purpose,  beneath  a  calm 
exterior,  untossed  by  storm  and  passion,  marks  Bryant's  poet- 
ical work  from  the  first." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  As  the  patriarch  went  forth  alone  at  eventide,  the  rever- 
ies of  genius  have  been  to  Bryant  holy  and  private  seasons ; 
they  are  as  unstained  by  the  passing  clouds  of  this  troubled 
existence,  as  the  skies  of  his  own  '  prairies  '  by  village  smoke. 
He  has  preserved  the  elevation  which  he  so  early  ac- 
quired. He  has  been  loyal  to  the  Muses.  At  their  shrine  his 
ministry  seems  ever  free  and  sacred,  wholly  apart  from  the 
ordinary  associations  of  life.  With  a  pure  heart  and  a  lofty 
purpose,  has  he  -hymned  the  glory  of  nature  and  the  praise  of 
Freedom.  To  this  we  cannot  but  in  a  great  degree  ascribe 
the  serene  beauty  of  his  verse.  .  .  .  Like  all  human  be- 
ings, the  burden  of  daily  toil  sometimes  weighs  heavily  on  his 
soul :  the  noisy  activity  of  common  life  becomes  hopeless  : 


BRYANT  551 

scenes  of  inhumanity,  error,  and  suffering  grow  oppressive, 
or  more  personal  causes  of  despondency  make  the  grasshopper 
a  burden.  Then  he  turns  to  the  quietude  and  beauty  of  nat- 
ure for  refreshment.  .  ,  .  The  elevated  manner  in  which 
Bryant  has  uniformly  presented  the  claims  of  poetry,  the  tran- 
quil eloquence  with  which  his  chaste  and  serious  muse  appeals 
to  the  heart,  deserve  the  most  grateful  recognition.  .  .  . 
A  beautiful  calm,  like  that  which  rests  on  the  noble  works  of 
the  sculptor,  breathes  from  the  heart  of  Bryant.  He  traces  a 
natural  phenomenon  or,  in  melodious  numbers,  the  history  of 
some  familiar  scene,  and  then,  with  almost  prophetic  empha- 
sis, utters  to  the  charmed  ear  a  high  lesson  or  a  sublime  truth." 
— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Bryant  has  never  been  a  popular  poet,  in  the  ordinary 
acceptation  of  the  word ;  neither  is  Wordsworth,  to  whom  he 
has  the  nearest  intellectual  kinship.  But  he  has  ever  been 
conspicuous,  elevated  beyond  all  temporary  popularities." — 
Bayard  Taylor. 

"  Bryant  is  one  for  whom  the  grosser  world  had  no  allure- 
ments ;  endowed  with  kind  and  gentle  virtues,  modest,  un- 
assuming, mild,  simple,  elevated  in  sentiment,  dignified  in 
deportment,  pure  in  life,  a  worshipper  of  the  beautiful  every- 
where in  nature  and  art,  perpetually  attended  by  noble  and 
benevolent  aspirations,  familiar  as  a  friend  with  the  best 
spirits  of  the  past,  but  shrinking  instinctively  from  contact 
with  society. " — Parke  Godwin. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  wouldst  thou  rest 
Awhile  from  tumult  and  the  frauds  of  men, 
These  old  and  friendly  solitudes  invite 
Thy  visit.     They,  while  yet  the  forest  trees 
Were  young  upon  the  unviolated  earth, 
And  yet  the  moss-stains  on  the  rock  were  new, 
Beheld  thy  [Freedom's]  glorious  childhood,  and  rejoiced." 

—  The.  Antiquity  of  Freedom. 


552  BRYANT 

"  Ah  !  'twere  a  lot  too  blest 

Forever  in  thy  colored  shades  to  stray  : 
Amid  the  kisses  of  the  soft  southwest 
To  move  and  dream  for  aye  ; 

"  And  leave  the  vain  low  strife 

That  makes  men  mad — the  tug  for  wealth  and  power — 
The  passions  and  the  cares  that  wither  life, 
And  waste  its  little  hour." — Autumn  Woods. 

"  Though  forced  to  drudge  for  the  dregs  of  men 
And  scrawl  strange  words  with  the  barbarous  pen 
And  mingle  among  the  jostling  crowd, 
Where  the  sons  of  strife  are  subtle  and  loud — 
I  often  come  to  this  quiet  place, 
To  breathe  the  airs  that  ruffle  thy  face, 
And  gaze  upon  thee  in  silent  dream  ; 
For  in  thy  lonely  and  lovely  stream 
An  image  of  that  calm  life  appears 
That  won  my  heart  in  my  greener  years." 

— Green  River. 

2.  Genuineness  —  Sincerity — Naturalness. —  "  He 

is  so  genuine  that  he  testifies  to  nothing  in  scenery  or  human 
life  of  which  he  has  not  had  a  direct  personal  consciousness. 
His  sincerity  is  the  severity  of  character  and  not  merely  the 
sincerity  of  a  swift  imagination,  which  believes  while  it  is 
creating.  He  does  not  appear  to  have  the  capacity  to  assume 
various  points  of  view,  to  project  himself  into  forms  of  being 
different  from  his  own,  to  follow  any  inspiration  other  than 
that  which  springs  up  in  his  own  individual  heart.  .  .  . 
His  thoughts,  emotions,  language,  are  all  his  own.  He  has 
earned  the  right  to  them  by  the  contact  of  his  mind  with  the 
object  to  which  they  relate.  The  power  to  heal,  to  glad- 
den, to  inspire  to  sublime  effort,  to  lift  the  mind  above  all 
anxious  cares  and  petty  ambitions,  he  has  tested  by  conscious- 
ness."—£.  P.  Whipple. 

"  He  is  not  indebted  to  the  patient  study  of  books  so  much 


BRYANT  553 

as  to  calm  communion  with  outer  things.  He  has  levied  no 
contributions  on  the  masters  of  foreign  literature,  nor  depended 
upon  the  locked-up  treasures  of  ancient  genius  for  the  materials 
of  thought  and  expression.  He  has  written  from  the  movings 
of  his  own  mind  ;  he  has  uttered  what  he  has  felt  and  known; 
he  has  described  things  around  him  in  fitting  terms,  terms 
suggested  by  familiar  contemplation,  and  thus  his  writings 
have  become  transcripts  of  external  nature.  Mr.  Bryant's 
one  demand  is  for  a  spirit  of  greater  independence,  for  less 
imitation  of  form,  for  a  more  hearty  reliance  upon  native 
instinct  and  inspiration :  in  a  word,  for  greater  freedom, 
greater  simplicity,  and  greater  truth." — Parke  Godwin. 

11  He  is  original  because  he  is  sincere — a  true  painter  of  the 
face  of  this  country  and  of  the  sentiment  of  his  own  people." 
— Emerson. 

"  I  particularly  enjoy  Bryant's  poetry  because  I  can  under- 
stand it.  It  is  probably  a  sign  that  I  am  somewhat  behind 
the  age,  that  I  have  but  little  relish  for  elaborate  obscurity  in 
literature  of  which  you  find  it  difficult  to  study  out  the  mean- 
ing and  are  not  sure  you  have  hit  upon  it  at  last.  The  truly 
beautiful  and  sublime  is  always  simple  and  natural  and 
marked  by  a  certain  unconsciousness  of  effort.  This  is  Mr. 
Bryant's  poetry." — Edward  Everett. 

"  Does  any  memory,  however  searching  or  censorious,  recall 
one  line  that  he  wrote  which  was  not  honest  and  pure,  one 
measure  that  he  defended  except  from  the  profoundest  convic- 
tion of  its  usefulness  to  the  country,  one  cause  that  he  advo- 
cated which  any  friend  of  liberty,  of  humanity,  or  of  good 
government  would  deplore  ?"  —George  William  Curtis. 

"  He  is  not  only  a  poet  but  a  poet  whose  utterances  have 
been  singularly  free  from  the  varying  fashions  of  his  day. 
He  is  wholly  without  mannerism.  His  art  never  aims  at  being 
effectual  and  thus  never  betrays  itself.  Simplicity,  nobility, 
and  a  plainness  which  rivals  prose  without  being  itself  prosaic, 
are  the  characteristics  of  Mr.  Bryant's  style.  He  is  an  illus- 


554  BRYANT 

trious  example  of  the  youth  of  that  highest  poetic  art,  which 
does  not  spring  from  youthful  ferment  of  the  blood,  or  the 
motions  of  a  keen  enthusiastic  sentiment  which  is  dulled  by 
time,  but  which  is  woven  into  the  whole  moral  and  intel- 
lectual being  of  the  poet — is  born  with  him  and  cannot  be 
lost  while  he  lives." — Bayard  Taylor. 

"  Bryant  thought  that  verses  that  were  obscure  were  not 
poetry.  His  constitutional  aversion  to  sham  of  all  kinds  no 
doubt  had  its  share  in  begetting  this  aversion.  He  would  as 
soon  have  invoked  the  aid  of  a  brass  band  to  secure  his  audi- 
ence as  to  lend  himself  to  any  meretricious  devices  for  extort- 
ing admiration.  Such  he  regarded  all  surprising  novelties  of 
expression  and  all  subtleties  of  thought  which  the  common 
apprehension  does  not  readily  accept.  He  felt  that  no  poem 
was  fit  to  leave  his  hand  if  a  word  or  a  line  in  it  betrayed 
affectation  or  required  study  to  be  understood."  — John 
Bigelow. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  On  the  breast  of  earth 
I  lie  and  listen  to  her  mighty  voice — 
A  voice  of  many  tones — sent  up  from  streams 
That  wander  through  the  gloom  from  woods  unseen, 
Swayed  by  the  sweeping  of  the  tides  of  air  ; 
From  rocky  chasms  where  darkness  dwells  all  day, 
And  hollows  of  the  great  invisible  hills, 
And  sands  that  edge  the  ocean,  stretching  far 
Into  the  night — a  melancholy  sound." — Earth. 

"  Oft,  in  the  sunless  April  day, 

Thy  early  smile  has  stayed  my  walk  ; 
But  midst  the  gorgeous  blooms  of  May, 
I  passed  thee  on  thy  humble  stalk. 

"  So  they  who  climb  to  wealth  forget 

The  friends  in  darker  fortunes  tried. 
I  copied  them — but  I  regret 

That  I  should  ape  the  ways  of  pride. 


BRYANT  555 

"  And  when  again  the  genial  hour 

Awakes  the  painted  tribes  of  light, 
I'll  not  o'erlook  the  modest  flower 

That  makes  the  woods  of  April  bright." 

—  The  Yellow  Violet. 

"  I  stand  upon  their  ashes  in  thy  beam, 

The  offspring  of  another  race,  I  stand 
Beside  a  stream  they  loved,  this  valley-stream  ; 

And  where  the  night-fire  of  the  quivered  band 
Showed  the  gray  oak  by  fits,  and  war-song  rung, 
I  teach  the  quiet  shades  the  strains  of  this  new  tongue." 

— A  Walk  at  Sunset. 

3.  Sensibility  to  Nature. — "  Bryant  is  not  merely  a 
worshipper  at  her  shrine  [Nature's]  but  a  priest  of  her  myster- 
ies and  an  interpreter  of  her  symbolical  language  to  men. 
And  it  is  not  merely  the  external  forms  but  the  internal  spirit 
with  which  he  has  communed.  He  sees  and  hears  with  his 
soul  as  well  as  with  his  eye  and  ear.  Nature  to  him  is  alive, 
and  her  life  has  coursed  through  the  finest  veins  and  passed 
into  the  inmost  recesses  of  his  moral  being.  He  is,  perhaps, 
unequalled  among  our  American  poets  in  his  grasp  of  the  ele- 
mental life  of  Nature.  His  descriptions  of  natural  scenery 
imply  that  nature,  in  every  aspect  it  turns  to  the  poetic  eye,  is 
thoroughly  alive.  It  is  this  which  compels  us  to  mingle  ven- 
eration and  wonder  with  admiration  and  delight  in  reading 
his  works  ;  it  is  this  which  gives  his  poems  their  character  of 
depth."—  E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  They  transport  us  into  the  depths  of  the  solemn  primeval 
forest,  to  the  shores  of  the  lonely  lake,  the  banks  of  the  wild, 
nameless  stream,  or  the  brow  of  the  rocky  upland,  rising  like 
a  promontory  from  amidst  a  wild  ocean  of  foliage  ;  while 
they  shed  around  us  the  glory  of  a  climate  fierce  in  its  ex- 
tremes. .  .  .  Bryant,  dear  Nature's  nursling  and  the 
priest  whom  she  most  loves,  is  like  the  bards  of  old ;  his  spirit 
delights  in  fire,  air,  earth,  and  water — the  apparent  structures 


556  BRYANT 

of  the  starry  heavens,  the  mountain   recesses,  and  the  vasty 
deep." — Washington  Irving. 

11  As  to  sensibility,  no  man  ever  lived  more  delicately  sus- 
ceptible to  external  influences.  Not  only  is  his  eye  open  to 
the  forms  of  nature,  but  every  fibre  of  his  being  seems  to  be 
trembling  alive  to  them  :  like  the  strings  of  an  ^olian  harp, 
which  the  faintest  breath  of  the  wind  can  awaken.  Words- 
worth has  been  called  the  apostle  of  nature  ;  Bryant  said 
to  his  friend  Dana,  on  first  reading  Wordsworth's  '  Lyrical 
Ballads  :  '  'A  thousand  springs  seemed  to  gush  up  at  once 
into  my  heart,  and  the  face  of  Nature  changed  of  a  sudden 
into  a  strange  freshness  and  life.'  Nature,  indeed,  was  win- 
ning him  completely  to  herself,  and  one  of  the  first-fruits  of 
her  caresses  was  the  'Yellow  Violet.'  'A  Fragment,'  now 
known  as  '  An  Inscription  for  the  Entrance  to  a  Wood,'  is 
due  to  the  same  feeling.  Composed  in  a  noble  old  forest  that 
fronted  his  father's  dwelling,  it  is  an  exquisite  picture  of  the 
calm  contentment  he  found  in  the  woods.  Every  object — : 
the  green  leaves,  the  thick  roof,  the  mossy  rocks,  the  cleft-born 
wind-flowers,  the  dancing  insects,  the  squirrel  with  raised  paws, 
the  ponderous  trunks,  black  roots,  and  sunken  brooks — is 
painted  with  the  minutest  fidelity  and  yet  with  an  almost  im- 
passioned sympathy.  .  .  .  His  principal  theme  is  Nature, 
which  he  treats  as  one  whose  mission  it  was  to  show  an  uncon- 
genial world  what  beauty  lay  concealed  in  our  vast,  uncouth, 
almost  savage  wilds  of  woods  and  fields." — Parke  Godwin. 
"  Thank  God  !  his  hand  on  nature's  keys, 

Its  cunning  keeps  at  life's  full  span." — Whittier. 

"  What  Nature  said  to  him  was  plainly  spoken  and  clearly 
heard  and  perfectly  repeated.  Let  him  more  and  more  give 
human  voice  to  woods  and  waters,  and  in  acting  as  the  accepted 
interpreter  of  Nature,  let  him  speak  fearlessly  to  the  heart  as 
to  the  eye.  The  primeval  woods,  God's  first  temples,  breathe 
the  solemn  benediction  of  his  verse." — George  William 
Curtis. 


BRYANT  557 

"  Then  came  a  woman  in  the  night, 

When  winds  were  whist,  and  moonlight  smiled, 
Where  in  his  mother's  arms,  who  slept, 
There  lay  a  new-born  child. 

"  She  gazed  at  him  with  loving  looks, 
And  while  her  hand  upon  his  head 
She  laid  in  blessing  and  in  power, 
In  slow,  deep  words  she  said  : 

"  '  This  child  is  mine.     Of  all  my  sons 
Are  none  like  what  the  lad  shall  be, 
Though  these  are  wise,  and  those  are  strong, 
And  all  are  dear  to  me. 

"  '  The  elder  sisters  of  my  race 

Shall  taunt  no  more  that  I  am  dumb ; 
Hereafter  I  shall  sing  through  him, 
In  ages  yet  to  come  !  ' 

"  She  stooped  and  kissed  his  baby  mouth, 
Whence  came  a  breath  of  melody, 
As  from  the  closed  leaves  of  a  rose 
The  murmur  of  a  bee  ! 

"  Thus  did  she  consecrate  the  child, 
His  more  than  mother  from  that  hour, 
Albeit  at  first  he  knew  her  not, 
Nor  guessed  his  sleeping  power. ' ' 

— R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"I  shall  never  forget  with  what  feeling  my  friend  Bryant, 
some  years  ago,  described  to  me  the  effect  produced  upon  him 
by  his  meeting  for  the  first  time  Wordsworth's  Ballads.  .  .  . 
He  had  felt  the  sympathetic  truth  from  an  according  mind,  and 
you  see  how  instantly  his  powers  and  affections  shot  over  the 
earth  and  through  his  kind." — Richard  H.  Dana. 

"  Mr.  Bryant  is  best  known  to  us  as  the  poet  who  has 
sought  his  inspiration  from  American  forests.  Save  Emerson, 


558  BRYANT 

no  American  poet  so  often  and  so  well  described  the  Nature 
familiar  to  the  residents  of  the  Eastern  States — the  Nature 
which  has  been  the  background  of  most  of  our  literature. 
Bryant  might  have  said  with  Addison,  *  Poetic  fields  encom- 
pass me  around.'  Nay,  more,  he  interprets  the  meaning  of 
Nature  as  the  mirror  and  teacher  of  the  soul.  His  observa- 
tions of  skies,  woods,  and  waters,  and  his  power  of  description 
of  the  outer  world,  justly  entitle  him  to  his  wide  renown  as  a 
poet  of  nature." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  All  the  green  herbs 

Are  stirring  in  his  breath;  a  thousand  flowers, 
By  the  road-side  and  the  borders  of  the  brook, 
Nod  gayly  to  each  other  ;  glossy  leaves 
Are  twinkling  in  the  sun,  as  if  the  dew 
Were  on  them  yet,  and  silver  waters  break 
Into  small  waves  and  sparkle  as  he  comes." 

—  The  Summer  Wind. 

"  *  There  in  the  boughs  that  hide  the  roof  the  mock-bird  sits  and 

sings, 
And   there  the  hang-bird's  brood  within  its  little  hammock 

swings ; 
A  pebbly  brook,  where  rustling   winds   among   the   hopples 

sweep, 

Shall  lull  thee  till  the  morning  sun  looks  in  upon  thy  sleep.'" 

—  The  Strange  Lady. 

"  The  rain-drops  glistened  on  the  trees  around, 
Whose  shadows  on  the  tall  grass  were  not  stirred, 
Save  when  a  shower  of  diamonds,  to  the  ground 
Was  shaken  by  the  flight  of  startled  bird  ; 
For  birds  were  warbling  round,  and  bees  were  heard 
About  the  flowers  ;  the  cheerful  rivulet  sung 
And  gossiped,  as  he  hastened  ocean-ward  ; 
To  the  gray  oak  the  squirrel,  chiding,  clung, 
And  chirping  from  the  ground  the  grasshopper  upsprung." 

—After  a  Tempest. 


BRYANT  559 

4.  Majesty — Sublimity. — "  In  his  movement  Bryant  is 
the  most  Miltonic  of  American  poets.  No  writer  since  the 
Elizabethan  era  has  given  to  the  world  more  rolling  and 
majestic  periods  than  has  the  author  of  '  Thanatopsis. ' 

"  Vast  as  are  the  themes,  giving  scope  for  the  boldest  and 
broadest  flights  and  exciting  the  highest  sense  of  sublimity, 
they  are  treated  with  a  corresponding  grandeur  of  language 
and  thought.  Certainly  it  ["Thanatopsis  "]  is  marked  by  a 
grandeur  and  profundity  of  thought,  a  breadth  of  treatment 
and  an  imagination,  that  surprises  us  in  one  of  his  age — only 
seventeen . ' '  — Parke  Godwin. 

"  The  grandeur  of  '  Thanatopsis  '  may  be  limited  and  im- 
perfect, but  it  is  still  grandeur." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"The  perfection  of  its  ["  Thanatopsis's  "]  rhythm,  the 
majesty  and  dignity  of  the  tone  of  matured  reflection  which 
breathes  through  it,  the  solemnity  of  its  underlying  sentiment, 
and  the  austere  unity  of  the  pervading  thought,  would  deceive 
almost  any  critic  into  affirming  it  to  be  the  product  of  an 
imaginative  thinker  to  whom  years  had  brought  the  philo- 
sophic mind."—  E.  P.  Whipple. 

"We  have  always  considered  his  '  Antiquity  of  Freedom' 
and  '  Hymn  to  Death '  as  stronger  and  loftier  strains  than 
'  Thanatopsis,'  the  charm  of  which  lies  chiefly  in  its  grave, 
majestic  music." — Bayard  Taylor. 

"  The  reverential  awe  of  the  irresistible  pervades  the  verses 
entitled  'Thanatopsis'  and  'A  Forest  Hymn,'  imparting  to 
them  a  sweet  solemnity,  which  must  affect  all  thinking  hearts." 
— James  Grant  Wilson. 

"A  noble  simplicity  of  language,  combined  with  these 
traits,  often  leads  to  the  most  genuine  sublimity  of  expression. 
Some  of  his  lines  are  unsurpassed  in  this  respect.  They  so 
quietly  unfold  a  great  thought  or  a  magnificent  image  that  we 
are  often  taken  by  surprise." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 


560  BRYANT 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Oh,  God!  when  thou 

Dost  scare  the  world  with  tempests,  set  on  fire 

The  heavens  with  falling  thunderbolts,  or  fill, 

With  all  the  waters  of  the  firmament 

The  swift  dark  whirl-wind  that  uproots  the  woods 

And  drowns  the  villages  ;  when,  at  thy  call, 

Uprises  the  great  deep  and  throws  himself 

Upon  the  continent,  and  overwhelms 

Its  cities — who  forgets  not,  at  sight 

Of  these  tremendous  tokens  of  thy  power, 

His  pride,  and  lays  his  strifes  and  follies  by  ?  " 

— A  Forest  Hymn. 

"  And  lo  !  on  the  wing  of  the  heavy  gales, 
Through  the  boundless  arch  of  heaven  he  sails  ; 
Silent  and  slow  and  terribly  strong, 
The  mighty  shadow  is  borne  along, 

"  Like  the  dark  eternity  to  come ; 

While  the  world  below,  dismaved  and  dumb, 
Through  the  calm  of  the  thick  hot  atmosphere 
Looks  up  at  its  gloomy  folds  with  fear." 

—  The  Hurricane. 
"  The  hills 

Rocked-ribbed  and  ancient  as  the  sun, — the  vales 
Stretching  in  pensive  quietness  between  ; 
The  venerable  woods — rivers  that  move 
In  majesty,  and  the  complaining  brooks 
That  make  the  meadows  green  ;  and,  poured  round  all, 
Old  Ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste, — 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man." — Thanatopsis. 

5.  Fulness— Suggestiveness. — "Another  character- 
istic of  Bryant's  poetical  diction  is  its  fulness  of  matter. 
Every  line  is  load ec  with  meaning.  This  weight  and  wealth 
and  compactness  of  thought  sometimes  fail  to  impress  the 


BRYANT  56l 

reader  in  his  blank  verse,  on  account  of  its  swift  and  slipping 
freedom  of  movement ;  but  in  his  singing  rhyme  they  are 
forced  upon  the  attention." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Enough  is  suggested  to  convey  a  strong  impression,  and 
often  by  the  introduction  of  a  single  circumstance  the  mind 
is  instantly  able  to  complete  the  picture.  Some  elevating 
inference  or  truth  is  elicited  from  every  scene  consecrated  by 
his  muse." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Certain  of  Bryant's  pieces  it  is  impossible  to  read  with- 
out gliding  unconsciously  into  a  thousand  trains  of  associated 
thought;  a  single  epithet  sometimes  tells  many  a  secret." 
— Parke  Godwin. 

"  His  close  observation  of  the  phenomena  of  nature  and 
the  graphic  felicity  of  his  details  prevent  his  descriptions 
from  ever  becoming  general  and  commonplace."  —  Washing- 
ton Irving. 

"The  gravity,  the  dignity,  the  solemnity  of  natural  devo- 
tion, were  never  before  stated  so  accurately  and  with  such 
significance.  We  stand  in  thought  in  the  heart  of  a  great 
forest,  under  its  broad  roof  of  boughs,  awed  by  the  sacred 
influences  of  the  place.  A  gloom  which  is  not  painful  settles 
upon  us ;  we  are  surrounded  by  mystery  and  unseen  energy. 
The  shadows  are  full  of  worshippers  and  beautiful  things  that 
live  in  their  misty  twilights." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Then  strayed  the  poet,  in  his  dreams, 

By  Rome's  and  Egypt's  ancient  graves ; 
Went  up  the  New  World's  forest  streams, 
Stood  in  the  Hindoo's  temple-caves  ; 

"  Walked  with  the  Pawnee,  fierce  and  stark, 

The  sallow  Tartar,  midst  his  herds, 
The  peering  Chinese,  and  the  dark 
False  Malay  uttering  gentle  words." 

—  The  Death  of  Schiller. 
36 


562  BRYANT 

"  Ah  me!  what  armed  nations — Asian  horde 

And  Lybian  host — the  Scythian  and  the  Gaul — 
Have  swept  your  base  and  through  your  passes  poured, 

Like  ocean-tides  uprising  at  the  call 
Of  tyrant  winds — against  your  rocky  side 
The  bloody  billows  dashed,  and  howled,  and  died  !  " 

—  To  the  Apennines. 

"  Then  the  earth  shouts  with  gladness,  and  her  tribes 
Gather  within  their  ancient  bounds  again. 
Else  had  the  mighty  of  the  olden  time, 
Nimrod,  Sesostris,  or  the  youth  who  feigned 
His  birth  from  Lybian  Ammon,  smitten  yet 
The  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron,  and  driven 
Their  chariot  o'er  our  necks." — Hymn  to  Death. 

6.  Precision— Correctness. — "In  language,  indeed, 
he  is  so  great  an  artist  that  no  general  term  can  do  justice  to 
his  felicity.  The  very  atmosphere  of  his  sentiment,  the  sub- 
tlest tones  of  his  thought,  the  most  refined  modifications 
which  feeling  and  reflection  receive  from  individuality,  are  all 
transfused  into  his  style  with  unobtrusive  ease.  .  .  . 
No  melody  of  tone  is  ever  introduced  merely  for  the  music  ; 
no  flush  of  the  hues  of  language  is  ever  used  merely  to  give 
the  expression  a  bright  coloring,  but  all  is  characteristic,  in- 
dicating the  subordination  of  the  materials  to  the  man,  the 
poetry  to  the  poet.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  Bryant  is  so 
valuable  a  guide  to  young  lyrists,  who  are  so  prone  to  be  car- 
ried away  by  words,  and  who  emerge  from  their  tangled 
wilderness  of  verbal  sweets  and  beauties  without  any  essential 
sweetness  and  beauty  of  sentiment  and  imagination,  and  be- 
come, at  best,  authors  of  poetical  lines  and  images  rather 
than  poems.  To  this  singular  purity  and  depth  of  sentiment 
he  adds  a  corresponding  simplicity,  closeness,  clearness,  and 
beauty  of  expression.  His  style  is  literally  himself.  It  has 
the  form  and  follows  the  movement  of  his  nature,  and  is 
shaped  into  the  exact  expression  of  the  word,  sentiment,  and 
thought  out  of  which  the  poem  springs." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


BRYANT  563 

"Now,  when  expression  has  been  carried  to  the  extreme, 
it  is  an  occasional  relief  to  recur  to  the  clearness,  to  the  exact 
appreciation  of  words,  discoverable  in  every  portion  of  Bry- 
ant's verse  and  prose.  It  is  like  a  return  from  a  florid  renais- 
sance to  the  antique ;  and  indeed  there  was  something  Doric 
in  Bryant's  nature.  His  diction,  like  his  thought,  often 
refreshes  us  as  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land. 
Give  his  poems  a  study,  and  their  simplicity  is  a 
charm.  .  .  .  Verse,  to  Bryant,  was  the  outflow  of  his 
deepest  emotions ;  a  severe  taste  and  a  discreet  temperament 
made  him  avoid  the  study  of  decoration." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"His  art  was  exquisite.  It  was  absolutely  unsuspected ; 
but  it  served  its  truest  purpose,  for  it  removed  every  obstruc- 
tion to  the  full  and  complete  delivery  of  his  message." — 
George  William  Curtis. 

"  It  seems  as  if  his  whole  study  had  been  how  his  thoughts 
might  be  most  beautifully  uttered.  Not  only  are  words  not 
misused,  which  would  be  small  praise  indeed,  but  none  occur 
that  any  process  of  refinement  can  improve." — Parke  Godwin. 

"He  sees  us  [the  flowers,  etc.]  where  other  eyes  would  see 
nothing,  or  at  most  the  scenery  of  our  great  theatre — the 
earth. — One  cannot  read  Mr.  Bryant's  poetry  without  wonder 
and  admiration — wonder  at  the  closeness  of  his  observation 
and  admiration  of  what  he  accomplishes  by  it." — R.  H. 
Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Nor  I  alone  ;  a  thousand  bosoms  round 
Inhale  thee  in  the  fulness  of  delight  ; 
And  languid  forms  rise  up,  and  pulses  bound 
Livelier,  at  coming  of  the  wind  of  night; 
And,  languishing  to  hear  thy  grateful  sound, 
Lies  the  vast  inland  stretched  beyond  the  sight. 
Go  forth  into  the  gathering  shade  ;  go  forth, 
God's  blessing  breathed  upon  the  fainting  earth !  " 

—  To  the  Evening  Wind, 


564  BRYANT 

"  Yet  loveliest  are  thy  setting  smiles,  and  fair, 

Fairest  of  all  that  earth  beholds,  the  hues 
That  live  among  the  clouds,  and  flush  the  air, 

Lingering  and  deepening  at  the  hour  of  dews. 
Then  softest  gales  are  breathed,  and  softest  heard 
The  plaining  voice  of  streams  and  pensive  note  of  bird. 

They  deemed  their  quivered  warrior,  when  he  died 
Went  to  the  bright  isles  beneath  the  setting  sun  ; 
Where  winds  are  aye  at  peace  and  skies  are  fair, 
And  purple-skirted  clouds  curtain  the  crimson  air." 

—A  Walk  at  Sunset. 

7.  Tenderness— Pensive  Melancholy. — In  Bryant's 
poems  a  gentleness  as  soft  as  that  of  a  woman,  a  tenderness 
mild  and  tearful  as  early  love,  simplicity  like  that  of  uncon- 
scious youth,  are  joined  to  the  lofty  philosophy  of  a  sage. 
Innumerable  are  the  passages  that  touch  our  best  feelings, 
sinking  quietly  into  the  heart  and  melting  it,  like  a  strain  of 
music,  into  liquid  joy  and  love." — Parke  Godwin. 

"  He  has  the  gift  of  shedding  over  them  [his  descriptions] 
a  pensive  grace  that  blends  them  all  into  harmony  and  of 
clothing  them  with  moral  associations  that  make  them  speak 
to  the  heart." — Washington  Irving. 

"  The  chief  charm  of  Bryant's  poetry  consists  in  a  tender 
pensiveness,  a  moral  melancholy,  breathing  over  all  his  con- 
templations, dreams,  and  reveries,  even  such  as  are  in  the  main 
glad,  and  giving  assurance  of  a  pure  spirit,  benevolent  to  all 
living  creatures,  and  habitually  pious  in  the  felt  omnipresence 
of  the  Creator.  It  overflows  with  what  Wordsworth  calls  the 
religion  of  the  Gods.  The  reverential  awe  of  the  irresistible 
pervades  the  verses  entitled  '  Thanatopsis  '  and  '  A  Forest 
Hymn,'  imparting  to  them  a  sweet  solemnity  which  must  affect 
all  thinking  hearts." — Professor  Wilson  [Christopher  North]. 

"  I  linger  upon  it  ["  Thanatopsis  "]  because  it  was  the  first 
adequate  voice  of  the  New  England  spirit ;  and  in  the  gran- 
deur of  the  hills,  in  the  heroic  Puritan  tradition  of  sacrifice 


BRYANT  565 

and  endurance  in  the  daily  life,  saddened  by  imperious  and 
awful  theologic  dogma,  in  the  hard  circumstance  of  the  pio- 
neer household,  the  contest  with  the  wilderness,  the  grim  le- 
gends of  Indians  and  the  war,  have  we  not  some  natural  clue 
to  the  strain  of  '  Thanatopsis,'  the  depthless  and  entrancing 
sadness,  as  of  inexorable  fate,  that  murmurs,  like  the  autumn 
wind  through  the  forest,  in  the  melancholy  cadences  of  the 
'  Hymn  to  Death?  '  " — George  William  Curtis. 

"  Wayward  beauty  or  tender  suggestiveness  is  not  absent, 
but  each  is  subordinated  to  the  solemn  reflections  inspired  by 
the  scenes  in  which  we  live." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity  was  ever  sounding  in 
his  ears,  moaning  like  the  wind  of  the  forest.  .  .  .  This 
large,  far-reaching  sympathy  with  his  fellow-creatures  is  a 
marked  characteristic  of  Bryant's  poetry,  and  distinguishes  it 
from  that  of  every  other  American  poet,  living  or  dead." — 
R.  H.  Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Let  me  move  slowly  through  the  street, 

Filled  with  an  ever-shifting  train, 
Amid  the  sound  of  steps  that  beat 

The  murmuring  walks  like  autumn  rain. 

"  How  fast  the  flitting  figures  come  ! 

The  mild,  the  fierce,  the  stony  face  ; 
Some  bright  with  thoughtless  smiles,  and  some 
Where  secret  tears  have  left  their  trace. 

"  They  pass— to  toil,  to  strife,  to  rest ; 

To  halls  in  which  the  feast  is  spread  ; 
To  chambers  where  the  funeral  guest 
In  silence  sits  beside  the  dead." 

—  The  Crowded  Street. 

"  Thou  changest  not — but  I  am  changed 
Since  first  thy  pleasant  banks  I  ranged  ; 
And  the  grave  stranger,  come  to  see 
The  play-place  of  his  infancy, 


566  BRYANT 

Has  scarce  a  single  trace  of  him 

Who  sported  once  upon  thy  brim. 

The  visions  of  my  youth  are  past — 

Too  bright,  too  beautiful  to  last." — The  Rivulet. 

"  Yet  there  are  pangs  of  keener  woe, 

Of  which  the  sufferers  never  speak, 
Nor  to  the  world's  cold  pity  show 
The  tears  that  scald  the  cheek, 
Wrung  from  their  eyelids  by  the  shame 
And  guilt  of  those  they  shrink  to  name, 
Whom  once  they  loved  with  cheerful  will, 
And  love,  though  fallen  and  branded,  still." 

—  The  Living  Lost. 

8.  Nationality — Patriotism. — "  His  poems  are  strictly 
American.  They  are  American  in  their  subjects,  imagery, 
and  spirit.  Scarcely  any  other  than  one  born  in  this  country 
can  appreciate  all  their  merit,  so  strongly  marked  are  they  by 
the  peculiarities  of  our  natural  scenery,  our  social  feelings, 
and  our  natural  convictions.  .  .  .  Nor  is  the  tone  of 
these  poems  less  American  than  the  imagery  of  the  themes. 
They  breathe  the  spirit  of  that  new  order  of  things  in  which 
we  are  cast.  They  are  fresh  like  a  young  people  unwarped 
by  the  superstitions  and  prejudices  of  the  age ;  free  like  a 
nation  scorning  the  thought  of  bondage  ;  generous  like  a  so- 
ciety whose  only  protection  is  mutual  sympathy ;  and  bold 
and  vigorous,  like  a  land  pressing  onward  to  a  future  of  glori- 
ous enlargement.  The  noble  instincts  of  democracy  prompt 
and  animate  every  strain.  An  attachment  to  liberty  stronger 
than  the  desire  for  life,  an  immovable  regard  for  human  rights, 
a  confidence  in  humanity  that  admits  of  no  misgivings,  and  a 
rejoicing  hope  of  the  future,  full  of  illumination  and  peace, 
these  are  the  sentiments  that  they  everywhere  inspire."- 
Parke  Godwin. 

"Bryant,  for  half  a  century,  with  conscience  and  knowl- 
edge, with  power  and  unquailing  courage,  did   his   part  in 


BRYANT  567 

holding  the  hand  and  heart  of  his  country  true  to  her  now 
glorious  ideal.  .  .  .  The  last  stanza  of  this  poem  ["  The 
Ages"]  breathes  in  majestic  music  that  pure  passion  for 
America  and  that  strong  and  sublime  faith  in  her  destiny, 
which  constantly  appears  in  his  verse  and  never  wavered  in 
his  heart." — George  William  Curtis. 

"  Bryant's  poems  are  valuable  not  only  for  their  intrinsic 
excellence  but  for  the  vast  influence  their  wide  circulation  is 
calculated  to  exercise  on  national  feelings  and  manners." — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  The  feeling  with  which  he  looks  upon  the  wonders  of 
creation  is  remarkably  appropriate  to  the  scenery  of  the  New 
World.  His  poems  convey,  to  an  extraordinary  degree,  the 
actual  impression  which  is  awakened  by  our  lakes,  mountains, 
and  forests.  .  .  .  We  esteem  it  one  of  Bryant's  great 
merits  that  he  has  not  only  faithfully  pictured  the  beauties 
but  caught  the  very  spirit  of  our  scenery.  His  best  poems 
have  an  an  them -like  cadence,  which  accords  with  the  vast 
scenes  they  celebrate.  .  .  .  No  English  park,  formalized 
by  the  hand  of  Art,  no  legendary  spot  like  the  pine  grove  of 
Ravenna,  surrounds  us.  It  is  not  the  gloomy  German  forest, 
with  its  phantoms  and  banditti,  but  one  of  those  primeval 
dense  woodlands  of  America.  .  .  .  Any  reader  of  Bryant 
on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean,  gifted  with  a  small  degree  of 
sensibility  and  imagination,  may  derive  from  his  poems  the 
very  awe  and  delight  with  which  the  first  view  of  one  of 
our  majestic  forests  would  strike  the  mind." — H.  T.  Tucker- 
man. 

"The  British  public  has  already  expressed  its  delight  at 
the  graphic  descriptions  of  American  scenery  and  wild  wood- 
land characters  contained  in  the  works  of  our  national  novel- 
ist Cooper.  The  same  keen  eye  and  just  feeling  for  nature, 
the  same  indigenous  style  of  thinking  and  local  peculiarity  of 
imagery,  which  give  such  novelty  and  interest  to  the  pages  of 
that  gifted  writer,  will  be  found  to  characterize  this  volume 


568  BRYANT 

[Bryant's  poems]  condensed  into  a  narrow  compass  and  sub- 
limated into  poetry." — Washington  Irving. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There's  freedom  at  thy  gates  and  rest 
For  Earth's  down-trodden  and  opprest ; 
A  shelter  for  the  hunted  head, 
For  the  starved  laborer  toil  and  bread. 
Power,  at  thy  bounds, 
Stops  and  calls  back  his  baffled  hounds." 

—  Oh  Mother  of  a  Mighty  Race. 

"  But  thou,  my  country,  thou  shalt  never  fall, 
Save  with  thy  children — thy  maternal  care, 

Thy  lavish  love,  thy  blessings  showered  on  all— • 
These  are  thy  fetters — seas  and  stormy  air 

Are  the  wide  barrier  of  thy  borders,  where, 
Among  thy  gallant  sons  who  guard  thee  well, 

Thou  laugh'st  at  enemies  :  who  shall  then  declare 
The  date  of  thy  deep-founded  strength,  or  tell 
How  happy,  in  thy  lap,  the  sons  of  men  shall  dwell  ?  " 

—The  Ages. 

"  These  are  the  gardens  of  the  desert,  these 
The  unshorn  fields,  boundless  and  beautiful, 
For  which  the  speech  of  England  has  no  name — 
The  Prairies.     I  behold  them  for  the  first, 
And  my  heart  swells,  while  the  dilated  sight 
Takes  in  the  encircling  vastness." — The  Prairies. 

9.  Melody— Harmony. — "  The  cadences  in  '  The  Ages ' 
cannot  be  surpassed.  There  are  comparatively  few  conso- 
nants. Liquids  and  the  softer  vowels  abound,  and  the  partial 
line  after  the  pause  at  '  surge,1  with  the  stately  march  of  the 
succeeding  Alexandrine,  is  one  of  the  finest  conceivable 
finales." — Edgar  Allan  Poe. 


BRYANT  569 

"  How  can  we  praise  the  verse  whose  music  flows 
With  solemn  cadence  and  majestic  close, 
Pure  as  the  dew  that  filters  through  the  rose." 

— Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

"  The  very  rhythm  of  the  stanzas  'To  a  Waterfowl '  gives 
the  impression  of  its  flight.  Like  the  bird's  sweeping  wing, 
they  float  with  a  calm  and  majestic  cadence  to  the  ear." — 
H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  There  is  an  occasional  quaint  grace  of  expression,  as  in 

'  Nurse  of  full  streams  and  lifter  up  of  proud 
Sky-mingling  mountains  that  o'erlook  the  cloud,' 

or  an  antithetical  and  rhythmical  force  combined,  as  in 

'  The  shock  that  hurled 
To  dust,  in  many  fragments, 
The  throne  whose  roots  were  in  another  world 
And  whose  far-stretching  shadow  awed  our  own.' " 

— Bayard  Taylor. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Woo  her  when,  with  rosy  blush, 

Summer  eve  is  sinking  ; 
When,  on  rills  that  softly  gush, 

Stars  are  softly  winking  ; 
When  through  bows  that  knit  the  bower 

Moonlight  gleams  are  stealing  ; 
Woo  her  till  the  gentler  hour 

Wake  a  gentler  feeling." — Song. 

"  Where  olive  leaves  were  twinkling  in  every  wind  that  blew, 
There  sat  beneath  the  pleasant  shade  a  damsel  of  Peru. 
Betwixt  the  slender  boughs,  as  they  opened  to  the  air, 
Came  glimpses  of  her  ivory  neck  and  of  her  glossy  hair." 

—  The  Damsel  of  Peru. 

"  When  breezes  are  soft  and  skies  are  fair, 
I  steal  an  hour  from  study  and  care, 
And  hie  me  away  to  the  woodland  scene, 
Where  wanders  the  stream  with  waters  of  green, 


57°  BRYANT 

As  if  the  bright  fringe  of  herbs  on  its  brink, 
Had  given  their  stain  to  the  wave  they  drink  ; 
And  they  whose  meadows  it  murmurs  through 
Have  named  the  stream  from  its  own  fair  hue." 

— Green  River. 

10.  Calm  Trust  in  Providence. — "The  great  princi- 
ple of  Bryant's  faith  is  that  '  Eternal  love  doth  keep  in  his 
complacent  arms  the  earth,  the  air,  the  deep.'  To  set  forth 
in  strains  the  most  attractive  and  lofty  this  glorious  sentiment 
is  the  constant  aim  of  his  poetry." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  He  says  in  a  letter  that  he  felt  as  he  walked  up  the  hills 
very  forlorn  and  desolate  indeed,  not  knowing  what  was  going 
to  become  of  him  in  the  big  world,  which  grew  bigger  as  he 
ascended  and  darker  with  the  coming  on  of  night.  The  sun 
had  already  set,  leaving  behind  it  one  of  those  brilliant  seas 
of  chrysolite  and  opal  which  often  flood  the  New  England 
skies  ;  and  while  he  was  looking  upon  the  rosy  splendor  with 
rapt  admiration,  a  solitary  bird  made  its  way  along  the  illumi- 
nated horizon.  He  watched  the  lone  wanderer  until  it  was 
lost  in  the  distance,  asking  himself  whither  it  had  come  and 
to  what  far  home  it  was  flying.  When  he  went  to  the  house 
where  he  was  to  stop  for  the  night,  his  mind  was  still  full  of 
what  he  had  seen  and  felt,  and  he  wrote  those  lines,  as  imper- 
ishable as  our  own  language,  '  The  Waterfowl.'  The  solemn 
tone  in  which  they  conclude,  and  which  by  some  critics  has 
been  thought  too  moralizing,  was  as  much  a  part  of  the  scene 
as  the  flight  of  the  bird  itself,  which  spoke  not  alone  to  his 
eye  but  to  his  soul.  To  have  omitted  that  grand  expression 
of  faith  and  hope  in  a  divine  guidance  would  have  been  to 
violate  the  entire  truth  of  the  vision." — Parke  Godwin. 

"  This  philosophy  of  life  is  a  serious  one  ;  but  it  admits  of 
consolation  and  cheerfulness.  It  is  dreary  in  Byron;  it  is 
awful  in  Ecclesiastes  ;  but  it  is  neither  in  Bryant." — R.  H. 
Stoddard. 

"There  is  no  repining,   no  attempt  to  shield  his  self-love 


BRYANT  57J 

by  holding  Providence  responsible  for  his  hardships ;  still  less 
do  we  find  there  any  signs  of  surrender  or  of  despair,  but  the 
same  pious  trust  in  the  Divine  guidance  which  a  dozen  years 
before  had  sustained  him  in  another  crisis  in  his  career  and 
which  found  such  lofty  expressions  in  the  lines  *  To  a  Water- 
fowl.' His  inspiration  was  always  from  above.  In  the  flower, 
in  the  stream,  in  the  tempest,  in  the  rainbow,  in  the  snow,  in 
everything  about  him,  nature  was  always  telling  him  some- 
thing new  of  the  goodness  of  God  and  forming  excuses  for 
the  frail  and  erring." — -John  Bigelow. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  who,  from  zone  to  zone, 

Guides  through  the  boundless  sky  thy  certain  flight, 
In  the  long  way  that  I  must  tread  alone 

Will  lead  my  steps  aright." — To  a  Waterfowl. 

"  Oh,  no  !  a  thousand  cheerful  omens  give 
Hope  of  yet  happier  days,  whose  dawn  is  nigh. 
He  who  has  trained  the  elements  shall  not  live 
The  slave  of  his  own  passions  ;  he  whose  eye 
Unwinds  the  eternal  dances  of  the  sky, 
And  in  the  abyss  of  brightness  dares  to  span 
The  sun's  broad  circle,  rising  yet  more  high, 
In  God's  magnificent  works  his  will  shall  scan — 
And  love  and  peace  shall  make  their  paradise  with  man." 

—  The  Ages. 

"  And  when  the  hour  of  rest 
Comes,  like  a  calm  upon  the  mid-sea  brine, 

Hushing  its  billowy  breast — 
The  quiet  of  that  moment  too  is  thine  ; 

It  breathes  of  Him  who  keeps 
The  vast  and  helpless  city  while  it  sleeps." 

— Hymn  of  the  City. 

II.  Profound  Meditation. — "The  chief  of  our  poets 
of  meditation,  based  upon  observation,  are  Bryant  and  Emer- 
son."— C.  F.  Richardson. 


5/2  BRYANT 

"With  his  inimitable  pictures  there  is  ever  blended  high 
speculation  or  a  reflective  strain  of  moral  comment." — H.  T. 
Tucker  man. 

"  No  boy,  no  young  man,  has  ever  understood  his  [Words- 
worth's] serene  and  lofty  genius.  He  touches,  he  moves  no 
man,  until  years  have  brought  the  philosophic  mind.  It 
comes  to  some  early,  to  some  late,  to  some  not  at  all.  It 
came  to  Bryant  early,  and  it  never  left  him.  '  Thanatopsis  ' 
struck  the  keynote  of  his  genius,  disclosed  to  him  the  growth 
and  grandeur  of  his  powers,  and  placed  him  for  what  he  was, 
before  all  American  poets,  past,  present,  and  to  come." — R. 
H.  Stoddard. 

"  But  they  [his  juvenile  efforts]  do  not  as  poetry  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  real  bent  of  his  genius,  or  even  foreshadow  the 
characteristics  of  his  later  writings — that  minute  and  loving 
observation  of  nature  which  became  with  him  almost  a 
religion — or  that  profound  meditative  interpretation  of  the 
great  movements  of  the  universe  which  amounted  to  a  kind 
of  philosophy. ' ' — Parke  Godwin. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Be  it  ours  to  meditate, 
In  these  calm  shades,  thy  milder  majesty, 
And  to  the  beautiful  order  of  thy  works 
Learn  to  confirm  the  order  of  our  lives." 

— A  Forest  Hymn. 

"  Stainless  worth, 

Such  as  the  sternest  age  of  virtue  saw, 
Ripens,  meanwhile,  till  time  shall  call  it  forth 
From  the  low  modest  shade,  to  light  and  bless  the  earth." 

—  The  Ages. 
"  I  would  make 

Reason  my  guide,  but  she  should  sometimes  sit 
Patiently  by  the  way-side,  while  I  traced 
The  mazes  of  the  pleasant  wilderness 
Around  me.     She  should  be  my  counsellor, 


BRYANT  573 

But  not  my  tyrant.     For  the  spirit  needs 
Impulses  from  a  deeper  source  than  hers  ; 
And  there  are  motions  in  the  mind  of  man 
Thaj^she  must  look  upon  with  awe." 

—  The  Conjunction  of  Jupiter  and  Venus. 


Fondness  for  Apostrophe.— As  a  direct  corollary 
or  sequence  of  Bryant's  elevation  and  high  philosophy,  we 
find  him  continually  indulging  in  apostrophe.  In  less  dignified 
hands,  so  frequent  a  use  of  this  figure  would  become  a  blemish  ; 
but  it  seems  entirely  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of  the  man  and 
of  his  poems. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  ye,  who  for  the  living  lost 
That  agony  in  secret  bear, 
Who  shall  with  soothing  words  accost 
The  strength  of  your  despair  ?  " 

—  The  Living  Lost. 

"  Thou  dost  mark  them  flushed  with  hope, 
As  on  the  threshold  of  their  vast  designs 
Doubtful  and  loose  they  stand,  and  strik'st  them  down." 

— Hymn  to  Death. 

"  Thou'rt  gone,  the  abyss  of  heaven 

Hath  swallowed  up  thy  form  ;  yet  on  my  heart 
Deeply  has  sunk  the  lesson  thou  hast  given, 
And  shall  not  soon  depart." — To  a  Waterfowl. 


LOWELL,    1819-1891 

Biographical  Outline. — James  Russell  Lowell,  born  at 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  February  22,  1819  ;  father  a  Congrega- 
tional minister,  and  both  parents  of  English  descent ;  in 
1827  Lowell  enters  the  school  of  William  Wells,  near  "  Elm- 
wood,"  as  Lowell's  home  was  called;  he  enters  Harvard 
College  as  a  Freshman  in  1834,  and  forms  there  an  intimate 
friendship  with  George  B.  Loring;  he  is  only  a  fair  student, 
but  evinces  an  early  love  for  literature,  especially  poetry  ;  he 
becomes  secretary  of  the  "  Hasty  Pudding  Club,"  whose 
records  were  then  kept  in  verse ;  he  is  suspended  for  several 
months  during  his  Senior  year  for  neglect  of  studies ;  he  passes 
the  interval  studying  under  a  tutor  at  Concord,  where  he 
meets  Emerson  and  Thoreau  ;  he  writes  the  poem  for  Class 
Day  in  1838  (a  satire  on  the  Abolitionists  and  the  Concord 
Transcendentalists),  but  is  not  allowed  to  read  it  because  of 
his  suspension,  then  in  effect,  but  it  is  printed  in  pamphlet 
form  for  the  class ;  Lowell  passes  his  final  examinations  and 
takes  A.B.  with  his  classmates  in  June,  1838. 

At  first  he  thinks  seriously  of  entering  the  ministry  and  then 
takes  up  the  law  ;  by  October,  1838,  he  is  reading  Black- 
stone  "  with  as  good  a  grace  and  as  few  wry  faces  as  I  may  ;  " 
he  plans  a  dramatic  poem  on  Cromwell,  and  regrets  "  being 
compelled  to  say  farewell  to  the  muses  ;  "  in  1839  he  writes, 
"  I  am  schooling  myself  and  shaping  my  theory  of  poetry ;  " 
during  1839  he  writes  verses  ("  pottery  ")  for  the  Boston  Post 
and  for  the  Advertiser ;  in  December,  1839,  he  meets  Miss 
Maria  White,  who  ''knows  more  poetry  than  anyone  I  am 
acquainted  with;  "  he  receives  LL.B.  from  the  Harvard  Law 
School  in  the  summer  of  1840,  and  takes  up  the  law  moreseri- 

574 


LOWELL  575 

ously  because  of  his  father's  heavy  financial  losses  at  that  time 
and  because  of  his  engagement  to  Miss  White  in  the  autumn 
of  1840  ;  during  1839-40  he  contributes  verses  to  the  Knicker- 
bocker Magazine  and  to  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger 
under  his  own  name  and  under  the  pseudonym  of  "Hugh 
Percival ;  "  he  publishes  early  in  1841  a  collection  of  his 
poems  entitled  "  A  Year's  Life,"  which  wins  some  recogni- 
tion; he  spends  the  winter  of  1842-43  in  New  York,  under- 
going treatment  by  an  oculist,  and  makes  valuable  acquaint- 
ances, including  Page,  the  artist,  and  Briggs,  the  "  Henry 
Franca"  of  the  "Fable  for  Critics;"  during  1841-42  he 
begins  his  life-long  effort  to  secure  international  copyright, 
and  contributes  poetry  to  the  Boston  Miscellany,  Graham' s 
Magazine,  and  the  Democratic  Review,  receiving  from  ten  to 
thirty  dollars  for  each  poem  ;  in  June,  1843,  he  writes  to  Lor- 
ing:  "  I  am  more  and  more  assured  every  day  that  I  shall  yet 
do  something  that  will  keep  my  name  (and  perhaps  my  body) 
alive.  My  wings  were  never  so  strong  as  now.  So  hurrah 
for  a  niche  and  a  laurel !  " 

He  publishes  his  second  volume  of  poems  in  December, 
1843,  and  resolves  to  devote  himself  to  literature  rather  than 
law;  during  1844  he  publishes  "  Conversations  on  Some  of 
the  Older  Poets"  (not  since  republished),  and  marries  Maria 
White,  another  poet,  in  December  of  that  year;  they  spend 
the  winter  in  Philadelphia,  where  Lowell,  doubtless  influenced 
by  his  wife's  strong  abolitionist  sentiments,  becomes  a  con- 
tributor to  the  Freeman,  an  an ti -slavery  paper  ;  he  returns  to 
Cambridge  in  June,  1845  ;  in  1846  becomes  a  regular  con- 
tributor to  the  Anti- Slavery  Standard  at  a  salary  of  $500 
a  year  for  a  weekly  contribution  in  prose  or  verse ;  he  con- 
tinues this  connection  till  the  spring  of  1850,  contributing 
many  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers  "  and  his  poems  on  "  Garrison," 
"Freedom,"  "  Eurydice,"  "The  Parting  of  the  Ways," 
"Beaver  Brook,"  and  "The  First  Snowfall,"  the  latter  in 
memory  of  his  first  child,  Blanche,  who  died  in  March,  1847, 


576  LOWELL 

aged  fifteen  months;  during  1848  he  collects  and  publishes 
the  first  series  of  "  Biglow  Papers,"  publishes  "  A  Fable  for 
Critics"  (anonymously),  and  contributes  "  Sir  Launfal  "  to 
the  North  American  Review ;  the  entire  first  edition  of  the 
"Biglow  Papers"  is  sold  within  a  week  after  publication; 
during  the  winter  of  1849-50  he  publishes  a  collective  edition 
of  his  poems,  entertains  Frederika  Bremer,  and  loses  his  second 
child,  Rose,  then  three  years  old,  concerning  whom  he  writes 
"After  the  Burial"  (first  published  in  1869);  he  sails  for 
Italy  in  July,  1851,  hoping  thus  to  improve  his  wife's  failing 
health,  and  selling  a  part  of  his  patrimony  for  the  expenses  of 
the  journey  ;  he  severs  his  connection  with  the  Anti-Slavery 
Standard  in  April,  1850,  saying  :  "It  has  never  been  a  matter 
of  dollars  and  cents  between  us,  for  I  might  have  earned  much 
more  in  other  ways.  .  .  .  For  every  poem  which  has 
been  printed  in  the  Standard  I  could  have  got  four  times  the 
money  paid  me  by  the  committee  [controlling  the  Stand- 
ard] ;  "  he  loses  his  only  son,  then  in  his  second  year,  at  Rome 
in  the  spring  of  1852,  and  returns  to  America  in  the  following 
autumn ;  he  writes  little  during  his  first  foreign  tour,  saying, 
"I  have  been  observing;"  he  contributes,  in  September, 
1853,  his  "  Moosehead  Journal"  to  Putnam1  s  Magazine,  in 
which  are  also  published  about  that  time  several  of  Mrs. 
Lowell's  poems  ;  his  wife  dies  in  October,  1853,  leaving  him 
one  child,  a  daughter  ;  Lowell  writes,  "  I  understand  now  what 
is  meant  by  '  the  waters  have  gone  over  me ;  '  "  he  spends  the 
summer  of  1854  at  Beverly,  Mass.;  he  prepares  a  series  of  lect- 
ures on  the  English  poets  during  the  autumn,  and  delivers  the 
same  at  the  Lowell  Institute,  in  Boston,  during  the  following 
winter,  thus  winning  his  spurs  as  a  critic. 

In  January,  1855,  he  is  offered  the  chair  of  French  and 
Spanish  Literature  at  Harvard  ("at  a  salary  that  will  make 
me  independent  "),  thus  succeeding  Ticknor  and  Longfenow  ; 
he  contributes  "  Cambridge  Twenty  Years  Ago  "  to  Putnam's 
Magazine  in  January,  1854,  and  "  Pictures  from  Appledore  " 


LOWELL  577 

to  the  Crayon  for  December,  1854;  he  accepts  the  Harvard 
chair  on  condition  of  being  allowed  a  year  in  Europe  for  prep- 
aration ;  he  lectures  in  Wisconsin  and  other'  central  Western 
States  early  in  the  spring  of  1855,  "  going  home  with  $600  in 
my  pocket ;  "  he  publishes  "  Invita  Minerva ' '  in  the  Crayon  for 
May,  1855,  and  sails  for  Paris  in  June ;  he  meets  Leigh  Hunt 
and  Lowell's  friend  Story,  the  sculptor,  in  London,  where 
Thackeray  gives  a  dinner  in  Lowell's  honor  at  the  Garrick 
Club  ;  to  Germany  early  in  the  autumn  of  1855,  stopping  at 
Bruges,  Antwerp,  and  the  Hague,  and  settling  at  Dresden  to 
study  the  German  language  and  literature  ;  he  remains  at  Dres- 
den, "  working  like  a  dog — no,  a  pig,"  passing  a  wretched  win- 
ter, "  out  of  health  and  out  of  spirits;  "  in  March,  1856,  he 
starts  for  Italy,  and  visits  Bologna,  Parma,  Verona,  Modena, 
Florence,  and  Naples;  he  recovers  his  health,  and  returns  to 
Dresden  in  June,  1856  ;  to  Paris  in  July  and  back  to  America 
early  in  the  autumn,  to  take  up  the  duties  of  his  professorship, 
which  he  held  for  seventeen  years  thereafter  ;  he  gives  up  his 
home  at  Elm  wood  temporarily  and  goes  to  reside  with  his 
brother-in-law,  Dr.  Howe,  in  Cambridge;  he  gives  two 
courses  of  lectures  each  year  at  Harvard  ;  in  the  summer  of 
1857  he  marries  Miss  Frances  Dunlap,  and  in  the  following 
autumn  becomes  editor  of  the  then  newly  established  Atlantic 
Monthly  y  he  lectures  in  New  York  City  in  February,  1857  ; 
during  1858  he  writes  that  he  is  "  working  often  fifteen  hours 
a  day  ;  "  in  1859  he  begins  a  correspondence  with  Thomas 
Hughes  ;  he  returns  to  Elm  wood  in  the  spring  of  1861,  and 
during  the  same  year  writes  "  The  Washers  of  the  Shroud  ;" 
he  begins  the  second  series  of  "  Biglow  Papers,"  and  resigns 
the  editorship  of  the  Atlantic  in  May,  1861  ;  he  gives  up 
the  "Biglow  Papers"  in  June,  1862,  saying,  "It's  no  use 

my  brain  must  lie  fallow  a  while." 

Early  in  1864  he  becomes  joint  editor  of  the  North  Ameri- 
can Review  with  Professor  C.  E.  Norton  ;  he  edits  a  volume  of 
"  Old  Dramatists"  in  August,  1864  ;  in  July,  1865,  he  writes 
37 


LOWELL 

and  reads  at  the  Harvard  memorial  exercises  his  "  Com- 
memoration Ode  " — "  so  rapt  with  the  fervor  of  conception 
as  I  have  not  been  these  ten  years;  "  but,  a  little  later,  he  is 
"  ashamed  at  having  been  again  tempted  into  thinking  that  I 
could  write  poetry,  a  delusion  from  which  I  have  been  toler- 
ably free  these  dozen  years  ;  "  he  continues  his  studies  in  Ger- 
man literature  in  1865,  but  chafes  at  the  drudgery  of  his  pro- 
fessorship, saying,  "  If  I  can  sell  some  of  my  land  and  slip  my 
neck  out  of  this  collar  again,  I  shall  be  a  man.  .  .  .  My 
professorship  is  wearing  me  out;  "  concerning  his  financial 
receipts  from  his  magazine  articles,  he  writes  in  December, 
1865,  "  For  some  years  I  have  had  twice  fifty  dollars  for  what- 
ever I  write  and  three  or  four  times  fifty  for  a  long  poem;  "  he 
becomes  a  contributor  to  the  Nation  in  1866,  and  begins  a  cor- 
respondence with  Leslie  Stephen  ;  he  prints  his  last  "  Biglow 
Paper"  in  the  Atlantic  for  May,  1866,  and  publishes  during 
that  year  a  complete  series  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers"  with  a 
long  introduction  on  "Yankeeisms  "  ("getting  $820  for  my 
last  six  weeks'  work  ")  ;  he  writes  "  The  Nightingale  in  the 
Study  "  in  1867,  and  continues  his  "  annual  dissatisfaction  " 
of  lecturing  at  Harvard  ;  in  October,  1868,  he  publishes  a  new 
volume  of  old  poems  entitled  "Under  the  W-illows;"  during 
the  summer  of  1869  he  writes  his  long  poem  "  The  Cathedral  " 
(published  in  the  Atlantic  for  January,  1870)  ;  in  the  winter  of 
1870  he  visits  Washington,  stopping  to  lecture  at  Baltimore ; 
during  the  summer  of  1870  he  studies  old  French  metrical 
romances,  averaging  twelve  hours  a  day,  and  writes,  "I  long 
to  give  myself  to  poetry  again  before  I  get  so  old  that  I  have 
only  strength  and  no  music  left;"  he  entertains  Thomas 
Hughes  at  Elm  wood  in  the  autumn  ;  in  July,  1871,  he  sells 
"  my  birthright  [part  of  the  land  at  Elmwood]  for  a  mess  of 
pottage,"  and  writes  to  Leslie  Stephen,  "It  will  give  me 
about  $5,000  a  year,  and  Mabel  [his  daughter]  about  $400 
more;"  he  retains  the  Elmwood  house  with  two  acres;  he 
publishes  "Among  My  Books"  in  1870  and  "My  Study 


LOWELL  579 

Windows  "  in  1871  ;  he  resigns  the  Harvard  professorship  in 

1872,  writing  to  Miss  Norton,   "It   takes   a  good  while  to 
slough  off  the  effect  of  seventeen   years  of  pedagogy;  "  he 
publishes  his  essay  on  Dante,  and  sails  for  Europe  the  third 
time  in  1872  ;  he  lands  at  Queenstown,  and  visits  Dublin  and 
Chester  en  route  to  London;   thence  to  Paris  ("  picking  up 
books  here  and  there"),  where  he  meets  Emerson  ;  in  June, 

1873,  he  receives  D.C.L.   from    Oxford,  and   leaves    Paris, 
making   a    tour    of   Belgium,    Holland,    and    Germany,  and 
reaching  Venice  in  October ;  thence  to  Florence  ;  at  Rome, 
in  January   and  February,    1874,  and  to  Naples  in  March; 
while  at  Rome  he  writes  his  "  Elysian  Argosy"  (published  in 
the  Atlantic  for  May,  1874);   back  to  Paris  in  May,  1874, 
and  to  America  in  July. 

During  1875  he  publishes  in  the  Atlantic\ns  essay  on  Spen- 
ser and  his  Centennial  Ode,  ''Under  the  Old  Elm,"  and  in 
book  form  the  second  series  of  "Among  My  Books,"  con- 
taining the  essays  on  Dante,  Spenser,  Wordsworth,  Shelley, 
and  Keats  ;  he  lectures  again  at  Harvard,  and  writes  for  the 
Nation  two  poems  entitled  "  The  World's  Fair,  1876,"  and 
"  Tempora  mutantur"  both  of  which  excite  some  popular 
condemnation  ;  he  becomes  actively  interested  in  political 
reform  in  April,  1876,  and  is  made,  successively,  a  delegate 
to  the  State  and  national  conventions — the  latter  at  Cincin- 
nati, where  Hayes  was  nominated  ;  he  writes  his  "  Ode  for  the 
Fourth  of  July,  1876,"  read  at  the  Philadelphia  Centennial 
Celebration  ;  he  declines  repeated  popular  invitations  to  run 
for  Congress,  is  made  a  Presidential  elector,  and  continues 
lecturing  at  Harvard  in  the  autumn  of  1876  ;  he  visits  Wash- 
ington in  February,  1877,  stopping  at  Baltimore  to  give  a 
course  of  lectures  at  Johns  Hopkins  University  ;  he  is  offered 
by  President  Hayes  the  embassy  to  Austria  and  afterward  that 
to  Germany,  but  declines  both. 

In  June,  1877,  he  is  appointed  Minister  to  Spain,  and  sails 
thither  in  July,  visiting  Paris  and  London  en  route  and  reach- 


580  LOWELL 

ing  Madrid  in  August ;  he  finds  his  ministerial  duties  unex- 
pectedly heavy,  and  suffers  from  the  gout  (as  he  had  suffered 
for  years)  ;  he  visits  Seville,  Cordova,  and  Granada  during 
the  winter  of  1877—78 ;  in  the  spring  of  1878  he  makes  a  two 
months'  tour  through  Southern  France,  Italy,  and  Greece, 
returning  to  Madrid  in  July  ;  he  entertains  General  Grant 
therein  October;  on  January  19,  1870,  he  receives  his  ap- 
pointment as  Minister  to  England,  and  accepts  on  condition 
of  a  two  months'  interim;  in  the  autumn  of  1881  he  makes 
another  tour  through  Germany  and  Italy,  as  far  as  Rome, 
returning  to  London  in  January,  1882  ;  during  1884  he  is 
elected  Lord  Rector  of  St.  Andrew's,  and  receives  a  doctor's 
degree  from  the  University  of  Edinburgh  and  LL.D.  from 
Harvard;  he  delivers  his  address  on  "Democracy"  at  Bir- 
mingham in  October,  1884,  and  makes  several  other  public 
addresses  in  England,  about  this  time,  winning  great  popu- 
larity there ;  he  incurs  the  hostility  of  Irish-American  poli- 
ticians by  certain  official  action  during  1884;  during  1885 
he  loses  his  second  wife  in  London,  and  is  recalled  by  Presi- 
dent Cleveland,  reaching  America  in  June  ;  unable  to  bear 
the  associations  at  Elm  wood,  he  settles  at  Southborough, 
Mass.,  with  his  daughter  and  her  family ;  he  publishes 
"Democracy  and  other  Addresses"  in  1886,  and  revisits 
London  during  the  summer;  he  receives  great  public  honors, 
visits  Gladstone,  and  returns  in  the  autumn  ;  in  November, 
1886,  he  delivers  an  address  on  the  25oth  anniversary  of  the 
founding  of  Harvard  ;  in  1887  he  is  receiving  $2,000  a  year 
from  his  general  copyrights;  he  spends  the  summer  of  1887 
in  England  ;  during  1888  he  re-edits  and  publishes  his  poems, 
attends  the  anniversary  of  the  University  of  Bologna  as  Har- 
vard's representative,  and  spends  the  summer  in  England,  at 
Whitby ;  he  is  at  Whitby  again  in  1889,  returning  to 
America  in  October  and  settling  with  his  daughter  at  his  old 
Elmwood  home ;  he  is  severely  ill  during  the  spring  of  1890 ; 
he  dies  at  Elmwood,  August  12,  1891. 


LOWELL  581 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   CRITICISM   ON   LOWELL. 

Stedman,  E.  C,  "  Poets  of  America."     Boston,  1885,  Houghton,   Mif- 

flin  &  Co.,  304-348. 
Curtis,  G.  \V.,  "Orations  and  Addresses."     New  York,  1894,  Harper, 

3:   367-398. 
Haweis,    H.    R.,    "American   Humorists."     London,    1883,    Chatto   & 

Windus,  73-134. 
Underwood,  F.  H.,  "James  Russell  Lowell,  the  Poet  and  the  Man." 

Boston,  1893,  Lee  &  Shepard. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."     New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

2:    186-204. 
Whipple,     E.   P.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."     Boston,   1861,  Ticknor  & 

Fields,  68-71. 
Whipple,    E.    P.,    "Outlooks    on   Society."     Boston,    1888,    Ticknor, 

306-314. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "  American  Literature."     Boston,  1887,  Ticknor,  78-79. 
Bungay,  G.   \V.,    "  Off- Hand  Sketches."     New  York,   1854,   Dewitt  & 

Douglass,  394-400. 
Underwood,   F.    H.,  "James  Russeli  Lowell,  a  Biographical  Sketch." 

Boston,  1882,  Osgood  &  Co. 

James,  H.,  "Essays  in  London, "etc.     New  York,  1893,  Harper,  44-80. 
Stead,  W.,  "  Character  Sketches."     London,  1892,  Hodder  & Stoughton, 

120-134. 

Taylor,  B.,  "Critical  Essays."     New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  298-301. 
Nichol,  J.,  "American  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1855,  Black,  220-412. 
Wilkinson,  W.  C.,  "Free  Lance."     New  York,  1874,  Mason,  50. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  "Works."     New  York,  1855,  Redfield,  3:   275-282. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "A  Fable  for  Critics"  (Lowell's  Works).     Cambridge, 

1892,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  3:    1-95. 

"  Lowell,  J.  R.,  Letters  of  "  (C.  E.  Norton).     New  York,  1894,  Harper. 
Brown,  E.  E.,  "  Life  of  J.  R.  Lowell."     Boston,  1887,  Ticknor. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "  Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1882, 

Griggs,  2:   390-393- 
Curtis,  G.   W.,    "Homes  of    American    Authors."      New  York,    1853, 

Putnam,  349-366. 
Underwood,  F.  H.,  "  Builders  of  American  Literature."     Boston,  1893, 

Lee  &  Shepard. 
North  American   Review,  52:  452-466  (G.  S.  Hillard)  ;   58:   283-299 

(C.  G.  Felton);  66:  458-482  (F.  Bowen)  ;   153:  460-467  (R.  H. 

Stoddard)  ;  68:    182-190  (F.  Bowen). 


582  LOWELL 

North  British  Review,  46 :   472-482. 

Scnbner's  Magazine,  4  :   75-86  and   227-237  and  339-345  (W.  C.  Wil- 
kinson). 

Harper's  Magazine,  62:  252-273  (Underwood);   86:   846-850    (C.   E. 
Norton). 

Century  Magazine,  2:  97-112  (Stedman);   21  :   113-118  (S.    E.  Wood- 
berry)  ;   21  :    119-120  (J.  Benton)  ;  2  :   97-111  (E.  C.  Stedman). 
The  Literary  World,  16  :   217-225(0.    D.  Warner). 

Fortnightly    Review,    38:   78-89  (H.  D.  Traill) ;    50:   310-324  (Sidney 
Low). 

The  Nineteenth  Century,  17:   988-1008(0.  B.  Smith). 

The  Spectator,  58  :    744-745  (H.  D.  Traill). 

The  Nation,  53:    ii6-u8(T.  W.  Higginson);  57:  488-489(7.  W.  Hig- 
ginson) ;    34  :    438-      (E.  L.  Godkin). 

The  Critic,  9:    75-76  (Editor) ;    11:    85-96  (T.  B.  Aldrich) ;    16  :   82-83 
and  291-292  (Editor). 

Chicago  Dial,    7:    241-243   (M.    B.  Anderson);    12:    133-135  (O.    F 
Emerson). 

Andover  Review,  16  :    294-300  (Editor). 

The  Arena,  14:   504-529  (H.  Garland);    9:   705  (W.  J    Savage). 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  150:   454-460  and  589-590  (W.  W    Story). 

Contemporary  Review,  60:    477-498  (F.  H.  Underwood). 

Literary  World,  22:    290-291  (J.  W.  Parsons). 

New  England  Magazine,  5:    183-192  (E.  E.  Hale). 

Unitarian  Revie^v,  36  :   436-455  (J.  W.  Chadwick). 

Good  Words,  28:    521-527  (F.  H.  Underwood). 

Review  of  Reviews,  4:    287-291   (J.  F.  Jamieson)  and   291-294  (C.  T. 
Winchester)  and  294-296  (R.  D.  Jones)  and  296-310  (W.  T.  Stead). 

The  Spectator,  66  :   693-694. 

Gentleman's  Magazine,  15  :    464-487  (Haweis). 

Atlantic  Monthly,**):   35-50  (H.   James);   70:    744-757  (W.   }    Still- 
man)  ;   56 :   263-265  (O    W.  Holmes). 

Our  Day,  8:  347-356  and  444-453  (F.  H.   Underwood). 

Lippincotfs  Magazine,  50:    534-541  (R.  H.  Stoddard) 

Fortnightly  Review,  44  :    79-85  (H.  D.  Traill). 

Cntia,  8:    151  (G.  E.  Woodberry). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

i.  Culture— Erudition — Allusiveness.— If  Spenser  is 
'the  poet's  poet,"  Lowell  is  certainly  the  poet  of  the  man  of 


LOWELL  583 

culture.  While  he  is  intelligible  and  delightful  to  the  ordi- 
nary reader,  his  pages  abound  in  allusions  and  evidences  of 
scholarship  that  delight  the  more  cultivated  classes.  The 
pleasure  felt  on  recognizing  the  force  of  some  allusion,  per- 
haps hidden  to  the  ordinary  mind,  is  doubtless  akin  to  that 
felt  at  guessing  some  conundrum  or  at  being  recognized  in 
company  by  some  eminent  personage. 

"  Lowell  was  a  scholar  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  pos- 
sessing a  thorough  knowledge  of  English  literature  and  criti- 
cally conversant  with  other  literatures  as  well — the  classics  of 
Greece  and  Rome  and  the  classics  of  Spain  and  Italy,  France 
and  Germany.  A  scholar  not  a  pedant,  he  mastered  his 
learning,  and  it  profited  him  in  the  large  horizons  which  it 
disclosed  to  his  spiritual  vision  and  the  felicity  and  dignity 
which  it  imparted  to  his  style.  Gentleman  and  scholar  in  all 
that  he  wrote,  there  is  that  in  his  writing  which  declares  a 
greater  intellect  than  it  reveals.  .  .  .  He  is  regarded 
not  only  as  a  man  of  letters^but  as  a  fine  exemplar  of  cult- 
ure, and  of  a  culture  so  generous  as  to  be  thought  supra- 
American.  .  .  .  We  count  Lowell  as  a  specimen  not  of 
foreign  but  of  home  culture,  and  especially  of  our  Eastern 
type.  .  .  .  Lowell's  culture  has  not  bred  in  him  an  un- 
due respect  for  polish  and  for  established  ways  and  forms. 
Precisely  the  opposite.  Much  learning  and  a  fertile  mind 
incline  him  to  express  minute  shades  of  his  fancy  by  a  most 
iconoclastic  use  of  words  and  prefixes.  He  is  not  a  writer  for 
dullards,  and  to  read  him  enjoyably  is  a  point  in  evidence  of 
a  liberal  education.  ...  A  pedant  quotes  for  the  sake 
of  a  display  of  his  learning  ;  Lowell,  because  he  has  mastered 
everything  connected  with  his  theme.  .  .  .  The  fine 
thing  about  Lowell  was  his  plentiful  and  original  genius. 
This  was  so  rich  that  he  never  was  compelled,  like  many 
writers,  to  hoard  his  thoughts  or  be  miserly  with  his  bright 
sayings.  When  warmed  by  companionship  and  in  talk  he 
gave  full  play  to  his  spontaneity,  and  said  enough  witty  and 


584  LOWELL 

epigrammatic  and  poetic  things  to  set  up  a  dozen  small  talkers 
or  writers." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"His  love  and  mastery  of  books  was  extraordinary,  and 
his  devotion  to  study  so  relentless  that  in  those  earlier  years 
he  studied  sometimes  fourteen  hours  in  the  day,  and  pored 
over  books  until  his  sight  seemed  to  desert  him. 
Probably  no  American  student  was  so  deeply  versed  in  the 
old  French  romance ;  none  knew  Dante  and  the  Italian  more 
profoundly  ;  German  literature  was  familiar  to  him,  and  per- 
haps even  Ticknor,  in  his  own  domain  of  Spanish  lore,  was 
not  more  a  master  than  Lowell.  .  .  .  His  extraordinary 
knowledge,  whether  of  out-door  or  of  in-door  derivation,  and 
the  racy  humor  in  which  his  knowledge  was  fused,  overflowed 
his  conversation.  There  is  no  historic  circle  of  wits  and 
scholars  ...  to  which  Lowell's  abundance  would  not 
have  contributed  a  golden  drop  and  his  glancing  wit  a  rep- 
artee."—  George  William  Curtis. 

"  Few  readers  know  what  deep  and  rich  philosophy,  what 
fruits  of  thought  and  culture,  are  to  be  found  in  some  of 
Lowell's  works.  ...  If  our  literature  shall  ever  fade  and 
die  in  the  coming  centuries,  and  some  future  reader  shall 
stumble  upon  [his]  books,  he  will  easily  and  excusably 
wax  highly  enthusiastic  over  the  unquestionable  wealth  of 
thought  therein  discovered.  .  . '  .  He  was  a  scholar 
of  thorough  culture  in  more  than  one  field." — C.  F.  Rich- 
ardson. 

"  The  loss  which  America  sustained  in  the  death  of  Mr. 
Lowell  in  August,  1891,  and  of  Mr.  Curtis  in  August,  1892, 
was  the  loss  of  the  two  men  who,  during  their  generation, 
had  most  truly  represented  the  ideals  of  American  culture  and 
ci  ti  zenshi  p. " — Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

"  The  poet's  mind  had  long  dealt  with  abstruse  ideas,  and 
was  fertile  in  recondite  allusion  ;  he  never  seemed  to  think 
that  even  fairly  read  people  might  need  a  clue  tojiis  meaning. 
Lowell  is  one  of  the  most  favorable  examples  of  American 


LOWELL  585 

culture.  He  has  profited  by  the  literatures  of  all  nations,  but 
he  has  been  the  disciple  of  no  one  literary  master  ;  .  .  . 
he  is  eminent  among  scholars  and  capable,  discreet,  and  dis- 
tinguished among  public  men.  .  .  .  The  best  things  in 
all  tongues  naturally  gravitated  to  him  ;  .and  it  is  difficult  for 
any  but  the  most  curiously  learned  to  say  whether  he  seemed 
more  at  home  with  the  philosophic  authors  of  Germany,  the 
great  poet  of  Italy,  the  immortal  romancer  of  Spain,  the  brill- 
iant wit  and  classic  finish  of  the  French,  or  with  the  long  line 
of  poets,  chroniclers,  and  thinkers  of  our  own  home.  .  .  . 
There  is  nothing  in  Lowell's  odes  obscure  to  a  well-trained 
mind ;  but,  unfortunately,  all  minds  are  not  so  trained  as  to 
dissolve  his  thought  from  out  the  richly  incrusted  diction.  So 
it  remains  that  the  stronger  poems  of  Lowell  are  beyond  the 
comprehension  of  all  but  cultivated  readers.  .  .  .  Low- 
ell's prose  is  like  cloth-of-gold — too  splendid  and  too  cum- 
brous for  every-day  wear." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  Mr.  Lowell  is  the  last  person,  .  .  .  to  scorn  or  deny 
the  tributaries  which  have  washed  down  their  many  golden 
sands  into  his  bright  lake.  .  .  .  Lowell's  poetry  has 
simply  gone  on  perfecting  itself  in  form  and  finish  till  now  he 
is  as  complete  a  specimen  of  '  a  literary  man's  poet ' — of  the 
consummate  artist  of  expression — as  it  would  be  easy  to  find 
in  a  summer  day's  hunt  through  a  well-filled  library.  Around 
the  stormy  topics  of  war,  slavery,  and  politics  plays  an  inces- 
sant summer  lightning  of  literary,  antiquarian,  and  instructive 
social  and  domestic  twitter." — H.  R.  Haweis. 

At  the  time  of  Lowell's  death,  a  writer  in  the  London 
Times  declared:  "  With  him  there  passes  away  one  of  the 
very  few  Americans  who  were  the  equals  of  any  son  of  the  old 
world — of  any  Frenchman  or  any  Englishman — in  that  inde- 
finable mixture  of  qualities  which  we  sum  up,  for  want  of  a 
better  word,  under  the  name  of  culture.  .  .  .  Wherever 
official  business  was  not  too  heavy,  he  invariably  read  for  a 
minimum  of  four  hours  a  day.  This  did  not  include  the  time 


586  LOWELL 

that  he  gave  to  ephemeral  literature  ;  it  was  the  time  that  he 
spent  in  the  serious  reading  of  books,  generally  old  books." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Elfish  daughter  of  Apollo  ! 

Thee,  from  thy  father  stolen  and  bound 
To  serve  in  Vulcan's  clangorous  smithy, 
Prometheus  (primal  Yankee)  found, 

Then,  perfidious  !  having  got 
Thee  in  the  net  of  his  devices, 
Sold  thee  into  endless  slavery, 
Made  thee  a  drudge  to  boil  the  pot, 
Thee,  Helios'  daughter,  who  dost  bear 
His  likeness  in  thy  golden  hair  ; 
Thee,  by  nature  wild  and  wavery, 
Palpitating,  evanescent 
As  the  shade  of  Dian's  crescent, 
Life,  motion,  gladness,  everywhere  !  " 

— Hymn  to  My  Fire. 

"  When  next  upon  the  page  I  chance, 
Like  Poussin's  nymphs  my  pulses  dance, 
And  whirl  my  fancy  where  it  sees 
JPan  piping  'neath  Arcadian  trees, 
Whose  leaves  no  winter-scenes  rehearse, 
Still  young  and  glad  as  Homer's  verse. 
*  What  mean,'  I  ask,  '  these  sudden  joys  ? 
This  feeling  fresher  than  a  boy's  ? 
What  makes  this  line,  familiar  long, 
New  as  the  first  bird's  April  song?  ' 
I  could,  with  sense  illumined  thus, 
Clear  doubtful  texts  in  Aeschylus  !  " 

—  The  Pregnant  Comment. 

"**  Phoebus,  sitting  one  day  in  a  laurel-tree's  shade, 
Was  reminded  of  Daphne,  of  whom  it  was  made  ; 
For  the  god  being  one  day  too  warm  in  his  wooing, 
She  took  to  the  tree  to  escape  his  pursuing ; 


LOWELL  587 

Be  the  cause  what  it  might,  from  his  offers  she  shrunk, 

And,  Ginevra-like,  shut  herself  up  in  a  trunk  ; 

And,  though  't  was  a  step  into  which  he  had  driven  her, 

He  somehow  or  other  had  never  forgiven  her  ; 

Her  memory  he  nursed  as  a  kind  of  a  tonic, 

Something  bitter  to  chew  when  he'd  play  the  Byronic, 

And  I  can't  count  the  obstinate  nymphs  that  he  brought  over, 

By  a  strange  kind  of  smile  he  put  on  when  he  thought  of  her. 

'  My  case  is  like  Dido's '  he  sometimes  remark'd  ; 

'  When  I  last  saw  my  love,  she  was  fairly  embark'd.'  " 

— A  Fable  for  Critics. 


2.  Independence  —  Sincerity  —  Manliness. — From 
the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his  career,  Lowell  exemplified  by 
contrast  the  force  of  his  own  stirring  lines  : 

"  They  are  slaves  who  dare  not  be 
In  the  right  with  two  or  three." 

Holmes  spoke  of  Lowell  on  the  latter's  seventieth  birthday 
as  one 

"  Who,  born  a  poet,  grasps  his  trenchant  rhymes 
And  strikes  unshrinking  at  the  nation's  crimes  ! " 

"  He  never  feared  and  never  shrinked  the  obligation  to  be 
positive.  Firm  and  liberal  critic  as  he  was,  and  with  noth- 
ing of  party  spirit  in  his  utterance  save  in  the  sense  that  his 
sincerity  was  his  party, -his  mind  had  little  affinity  with  super- 
fine estimates  and  shades  and  tints  of  opinion  :  when  he  felt 
at  all  he  felt  altogether." — Henry  James. 

"  His  patriotic  distinction,  and  his  ennobling  influence 
upon  the  character  and  lives  of  generous  American  youth, 
gave  him  power  to  speak  with  more  authority  than  any  living 
American  for  the  intellect  and  conscience  of  America.  .  .  . 
As  he  allowed  no  church  or  sect  to  dictate  his  religious  views 
or  to  control  his  daily  conduct,  so  he  permitted  no  party  to 
direct  his  political  action.  He  was  a  Whig,  an  Abolitionist, 


588  LOWELL 

a  Republican,  a  Democrat,  according  to  his  conception  of  the 
public  exigency." — George  William  Curtis. 

"The  war  poems  were  thrilling,  concentrating  the  pro- 
found emotions  of  a  nation.  There  was  so  noble  a  fervor  in 
them,  and  all  were  so  distinctively  elevated  in  tone,  as  to 
challenge  for  the  America  from  which  they  sprang  a  greater 
affection  and  reverence  than  many  in  this  country  had  been 
previously  wont  to  pay  her.  .  .  .  Although  Mr.  Lowell 
was  in  antagonism  with  the  feeling  of  the  majority  of  his 
countrymen  upon  these  matters  [the  invasion  of  Mexico  and 
the  Slavery  Question],  he  did  not  flinch  from  what  he  deemed 
to  be  his  duty,  but  lashed  out  against  the  popular  notions 
with  vigor.  He  had  the  courage  to  be  in  the  right  when  it 
was  not  so  easy  as  it  is  now."  —  G.  B.  Smith. 

"Lowell  always  produced  the  impression  that  he  was  in 
himself  greater  than  anything  he  had  done,  and  those  who 
listened  to  him  looked  for  a  crescendo  in  his  career. 
["The  Present  Crisis  "  and  other  poems]  gave  hope  for  upr 
lifting  the  lowly  by  active  sympathy ;  they  rebuked  the  jar- 
ring sects  with  parables  of  mutual  forbearance  and  Christian 
love.  ...  In  Lowell's  verses  there  was  something  of 
Wordsworth's  simplicity,  something  of  Tennyson's  sweetness 
and  musical  flow,  and  something  more  of  the  manly  earnest- 
ness of  the  Elizabethan  poets." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  The  sort  of  high  thinking  and  plain  speaking  which  did 
more  than  anything  else  to  remedy  this  state  of  things  [Sla- 
very] and  to  blow  the  liberation  spark  into  a  second  flame,  is 
to  be  found  in  [his]  .  .  .  utterance.  .  .  .  Never 
did  any  man  trust  himself  more  unreservedly  to  the  guidance 
of  a  '  blazing  principle.'  .  .  .  Behind  the  mark  is  a 
man  terribly  in  earnest — but  not  over  a  crotchet — over  a  pas- 
sion which  he  knows  sleeps  in  the  heart  of  all,  and  must  be 
aroused — the  love  of  freedom." — H.  R.  Haweis.^, 


LOWELL  589 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Men  !  whose  boast  it  is  that  ye 
Come  of  fathers  brave  and  free, 
If  there  breathe  on  earth  a  slave, 
Are  ye  truly  free  and  brave  ? 

They  are   slaves  who  fear  to  speak 

For  the  fallen  and  the  weak  ; 

They  are  slaves  who  will  not  choose 

Hatred,  scoffing,  and  abuse 

Rather  than  in  silence  shrink 

From  the  truth  they  needs  must  think." 

— Stanzas  on  Freedom. 

Then  to  side  with  truth  is  noble  when  we  share  her  wretched 

crust, 
Ere  her  cause  bring  fame  and  profit,  and  'tis  prosperous  to  be 

just ; 
Then  it  is  the  brave  man  chooses,  while  the  coward  stands 

aside, 

Doubting  in  his  abject  spirit,  till  his  Lord  is  crucified, 
And  the  multitude  make  virtue  of  the  faith  they  had  denied." 

—  The  Present  Crisis. 

"  I  do  not  fear  to  follow  out  the  truth, 
Albeit  along  the  precipice's  edge. 
Let  us  speak  plain  ;  there  is  more  force  in  names 
Than  most  men  dream  of ;  and  a  lie  may  keep 
Its  throne  a  whole  age  longer,  if  it  skulk 
ehind  the  shield  of  some  fair-seeming  name." 

— A  Glance  Behind  the  Curtain. 


3.  Didacticism. — In  his    "Fable   for    Critics,"   Lowell 
says  justly  of  himself : 

"  There's  Lowell,  who's  striving  Parnassus  to  climb 
With  a  whole  bale  of  isms  tied  together  with  rhyme, 

The  top  of  the  hill  he  will  ne'er  come  nigh  reaching 

Till  he  learns  the  distinction  'twixt  singing  and  preaching." 


59°  LOWELL 

"Lowell's  « progressive  '  verse  often  was  fuller  of  opinion 
than  beauty,  of  eloquence  than  passion.  .  .  .  The 
thought,  the  purpose — these  are  the  main  ends  with  Lowell, 
though  prose  or  metre  suffer  for  it.  .  .  .  His  doctrines 
and  reflections,  in  the  midst  of  an  ethereal  distillation,  at  times 
act  like  the  single  drop  of  prose  which,  as  he  reports  a  saying 
of  Landor  to  Wordsworth,  precipitates  the  whole.  .  .  . 
If  Whittier  and  Lowell,  like  the  Lake  Poets  before  them,  be- 
came didactic  through  moral  earnestness,  it  none  the  less 
aided  to  inspire  them.  Their  verses  advanced  a  great  cause, 
and,  as  the  years  went  by,  grew  in  quality — perhaps  as  surely 
as  that  of  poets  who,  in  youth,  reject  all  but  artistic  consider- 
ations."— E.  C.  Stedman. 

((  Song,  satire,  and  parable — more  and  more  as  he  lives  and 
ponders  and  pours  forth — are  all  so  many  pulpit  illustrations 
or  platform  pleas." — H.  R.  Haweis. 

"  The  primary  quality  of  Lowell's  intellect,  so  far  as  one  is 
able  to  understand  it  from  an  examination  of  his  literary  work 
as  a  whole,  was  not  so  much  that  of  the  poet  or  the  critic  or 
the  essayist  as  the  preacher.  This  was  the  vocation — the  task 
for  which  he  had  a  '  Call  ;  '  and  he  felt  it  so  himself,  and 
knew,  as  men  do  in  such  cases,  that  it  was  at  once  the  source 
of  his  weakness  and  his  strength.  ...  It  is  perfectly 
true  that  Lowell's  ascent  of  the  Parnassian  steep  was  somewhat 
seriously  impeded  by  the  republicanism,  Neo-Calvinism,  Old 
Liberalism,  Humanitarianism,  Meliorism,  and  the  rest  of  the 
formidable  spiritual  baggage  which  he  had  to  haul  behind 
him.  .  .  .  The  preacher  in  him,  during  at  least  the 
earlier  and  more  characteristic  period  of  his  work,  was  more 
than  the  scholar,  more  than  the  critic  or  the  poet.  .  .  . 
Much  of  Lowell's  teaching  is  like  Carlyle's,  a  discourse  on  the 
text — '  work  while  you  have  the  light. '  — Sidney  Low. 

"  There  is  a  high  aim  and  a  definite  moral  purpose  in  the 
'  Biglow  Papers.'  .  .  .  His  poems  have  body  as  well 
as  spirit ;  they  touch  the  heart  as  well  as  stimulate  the  intel- 


LOWELL  591 

lect ;  they  inculcate  nobleness,  purity,  and  brotherly  love, 
and  tend  to  raise  the  soul  above  sordid  views  of  life." — 
F.  H.  Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  New  occasions  teach  new  duties  ;  time  makes  ancient  good 
uncouth  ; 

They  must  upward  still,  and  onward,  who  would  keep  abreast 
of  Truth  ; 

Lo,  before  us  gleam  her  camp-fires!  We  ourselves  must  pil- 
grims be, 

Launch  our  Mayflower,  and  steer  boldly  through  the  desperate 
winter  sea, 

Nor  attempt  the  Future's  portal  with  the  Past's  blood-rusted 
Key."—  The  Present  Crisis. 

11  Where'er  a  single  slave  doth  pine, 
Where'er  one  man  may  help  another — 
Thank  God  for  such  a  birthright,  brother ! 
That  spot  of  earth  is  thine  and  mine  ; 
There  is  the  true  man's  birthplace  grand  ! 
His  is  a  world-wide  fatherland  !  " — The  Fatherland. 

"  Life  may  be  given  in  many  ways, 

And  loyalty  to  Truth  be  sealed 
As  bravely  in  the  closet  as  in  the  field, 

So  bountiful  is  Fate  ; 

But  thus  to  stand  beside  her, 

When  craven  churls  deride  her, 
To  front  a  lie  in  arms  and  not  to  yield, 

This  shows,  methinks,  God's  plan 

And  measure  of  stalwart  man, 

Limbed  like  the  old  heroic  breeds, 

Who  stands  self-poised  on  manhood's  solid  earth, 

Not  forced  to  frame  excuses  for  his  birth, 
'Fed  from  within  with  all  the  strength  he  needs." 

— Commemoration  Ode 

4.  Appreciation  of  Nature. — "There   is   a   beautiful 
feeling  in  his  poems  of  nature.     .     .     .     The  charm  of  Low- 


5Q2  LOWELL 

ell's  outdoor  verse  lies  in  its  spontaneity  ;  he  loves  nature 
with  a  child-like  joy,  her  boon  companion,  finding  even  in 
her  illusions  welcome  and  relief,  just  as  one  gives  himself  up 
to  a  story  or  a  play,  and  will  not  be  a  doubter.  Here  he 
never  ages,  and  he  beguiles  you  and  me  to  share  his  joy.  It 
does  me  good  to  see  a  poet  who  knows  a  bird  or  flower  as 
one  friend  knows  another,  yet  loves  it  for  itself  alone. 
What  Lowell  loves  most  in  nature  are  the  trees  and  their 
winged  habitants  and  the  flowers  that  grow  untended. 
Give  him  a  touch  of  Mother  Earth,  a  breath  of  free  air,  one 
flash  of  sunshine,  and  he  is  no  longer  a  book-man  and  a 
brooder;  his  blood  runs  riot  with  the  Spring;  this  inborn, 
poetic  elasticity  is  the  best  gift  of  the  gods.  Lowell  trusts  in 
Nature,  and  she  gladdens  him.  .  .  .  There  is  little  of  the 
ocean  in  his  verse  ;  the  sea-breeze  brings  fewer  messages  to 
him  than  to  Longfellow  and  Whittier.  His  sense  of  inland 
nature  is  all  the  more  alert ;  for  him  the  sweet  security  of 
meadow  paths  and  orchard  closes.  He  has  the  pioneer  heart, 
to  which  a  homestead  farm  is  dear  and  familiar,  and  native 
woods  and  waters  are  an  intoxication." — E.  C.  Stedman. 
During  Lowell's  life  Holmes  wrote  of  him  : 

"  He  is  the  poet  who  can  stoop  to  read 
The  secret  hidden  in  a  wayside  weed  ; 
Whom  June's  warm  breath  with  child-like  rapture  fills, 
Whose  spirit  '  dances  with  the  daffodils. '  " 

And  after  the  death  of  Lowell  his  brother-poet  sings  again  : 

"  How  Nature  mourns  thee  in  the  still  retreat 

Where  passed  in  peace  thy  love-enchanted  hours  ! 
Where  shall  we  find  an  eye  like  thine  to  greet 

Spring's  earliest  foot-prints  on  her  opening  flowers? 
Have  the  pale  wayside  weeds  no  fond  regret 

For  him  who  read  the  secrets  they  unfold  ? 
Shall  the  proud  spangles  of  the  field  forget 

The  verse  that  lent  new  glory  to  their  gold  ?  " 


LOWELL  593 

"  His  love  and  knowledge  of  nature  were  not  those  of  a 
poet  alone,  not  mere  Wordsworthian  sentiment,  but  such  as 
showed,  as  Darwin  long  afterward  said,  to  Lowell's  great  dis- 
pleasure, that  he  had  in  him  the  making  of  a  naturalist." — 
Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

"  So  acute  and  trained  an  observer  of  nature,  so  sympathetic 
a  friend  of  birds  and  flowers,  so  sensitive  to  the  influence  and  as- 
pects of  out-of-door  life,  that  Darwin  with  frank  admiration  said 
that  he  was  born  to  be  a  naturalist." — George  William  Curtis. 

11  He  used  to  enter  upon  the  long  walks  which  have  aided 
in  making  him  one  of  the  poets  of  nature  with  the  keenest 
zest.  There  was  no  quicker  eye  for  a  bird  or  squirrel,  a  rare 
flower  or  bush,  and  no  more  accurate  ear  for  the  songs  or  the 
commoner  sounds  of  the  forest.  ...  In  landscape  he 
sees  the  natural  object  and  he  paints  it  \  but  through  it  he 
seesalso  its  significance  and  its  ideal  relations.  .  .  .  Low- 
ell apparently  sympathizes  with  Chaucer  in  his  joy  in  nature 
and  in  his  pleasure  in  the  study  of  character.  .  .  .  When 
out  for  a  walk  nothing  escaped  him — not  the  plumage  of  a 
bird,  the  leafage  of  a  tree,  the  color  of  a  blossom,  nor  a  trait 
upon  a  human  countenance.  He  knew  almost  every  bird  by 
its  note,  its  color,  and  its  flight.  He  knew  where  flowers 
grew  and  when  they  should  appear.  All  this  knowledge  might 
have  been  possessed  by  a  person  with  little  sentiment ;  but  it 
was  with  the  eye  of  love  that  Lowell  looked  upon  the  world." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Dear  common  flower,  that  grow'st  beside  the  way, 
Fringing  the  dusty  road  with  harmless  gold, 

Thou  art  my  tropics  and  mine  Italy  ; 
To  look  at  thee  unlocks  a  warmer  clime  ; 
The  eyes  thou  givest  me 

Are  in  the  heart,  and  heed  not  space  or  time  : 
Not  in  mid  June  the  golden  cuirassed  bee 
38        • 


594  LOWELL 

Feels  a  more  summer-like  warm  ravishment 
In  the  white  lily's  breezy  tent, 
His  fragrant  Sybaris,  than  I,  when  first 
From  the  dark  green  thy  yellow  circles  burst." 

—  To  the  Dandelion. 

"  Dear  marshes  !  vain  to  him  the  gift  of  sight 
Who  cannot  in  their  various  incomes  share, 
From  every  season  drawn,  of  shade  and  light, 
Who  sees  in  them  but  levels  brown  and  bare  ; 
Each  change  of  storm  or  sunshine  scatters  free 
On  them  its  largess  of  variety  ; 

For  Nature  with  cheap  means  still  works  her  wonders  rare." 

— An  Indian- Summer  Reverie. 

"  Once  on  a  time  there  was  a  pool 

Fringed  all  about  with  flag-leaves  cool 

And  spotted  with  cow-lilies  garish, 

Of  frogs  and  pouts  the  ancient  parish. 

Alders  the  creaking  red-wings  sink  on, 

Tussocks  that  house  blithe  Bob  o'  Lincoln 

Hedged  round  the  unassailed  seclusion 

Where  musk-rats  piled  their  cells  Carthusian, 

And  many  a  moss-embroidered  log, 

The  wintering-place  of  summer  frog, 

Slept  and  decayed  with  patient  skill, 

As  wintering  places  sometimes  will." — Festina  Lente. 

5.  Skill  in  Portraiture.— In  spite  of  Poe's  virulent  re- 
joinder, the  "  Fable  for  Critics  "  has  taken  its  place  in  the 
treasure-house  of  our  national  literature  as  generally  a  fair  and 
good-natured  series  of  portraits.  .  .  .  The  portraits  in 
Fitz  Adam's  Story  are  more  like  those  of  the  immortal  Can- 
terbury pilgrims  than  any  we  have  had  since. 

"  Lowell's  portrait  of  Lincoln  in  the  '  Commemoration 
Ode '  is  delineated  in  a  manner  that  gives  this  poet  a  pre- 
eminence among  those  who  capture  likeness  in  enduring  verse, 
that  we  award  to  Velasquez  among  those  who  fasten  it  upon 
the  canvas." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

'  'We  may  not  always  agree  with  him  in  his  estimate  of 


LOWELL  595 

Dryden,  for  example — it  is  difficult  to  do  so — but  there  he  is, 
with  an  enviable  power  of  analysis  and  a  capacity  to  enter 
into  the  very  souls  of  some  of  our  cherished  literary  gods, 
which  we  can  but  envy." — G.  B.  Smith, 

"  Fond  of  frontiers-men  and  their  natural  ways,  he  puts 
them  in  a  line — '  The  shy,  wood-wandering  brood  of  charac- 
ter. '  He  paints  the  landlord  of  the  rustic  inn.  The  picture 
seems  as  deep-lined  and  lasting  as  one  of  Chaucer's.  Under- 
neath the  fun  and  riot  [in  "A  Fable  for  Critics"]  we  find 
outlined  portraits  and  swift  estimates,  which,  though  not  al- 
ways wholly  just,  are  of  marvellous  acuteness  and  force.  Some 
of  the  sketches — for  instance,  those  of  Emerson,  Whittier, 
and  Hawthorne — in  their  general  faithfulness  and  power  of 
discrimination  are  the  best  ever  made  of  these  men  either  in 
verse  or  prose.  .  .  .  '  A  Fable  for  Critics  '  is  the  wittiest 
of  literary  satires  and  the  most  faithful  of  caricatures." — F.  H. 
Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  No  eye  like  his  to  value  horse  or  cow, 
Or  gauge  the  contents  of  a  stack  or  mow  ; 
He  could  foretell  the  weather  at  a  word, 
He  knew  the  haunt  of  every  beast  and  bird ; 

Hard-headed  and  soft-hearted,  you'd  scarce  meet 
A  kindlier  mixture  of  the  shrewd  and  sweet ; 
Generous  by  birth,  and  ill  at  saying  '  no,' 
Yet  in  a  bargain  he  was  all  men's  foe  ; 
Would  yield  no  inch  of  vantage  in  a  trade, 
And  give  away  ere  nightfall  all  he  made." 

— Fitz  Adam's  Story. 

"  His  was  no  lonely  mountain-peak  of  mind, 
Thrusting  to  thin  air  o'er  our  cloudy  bars, 
A  sea-mark  now,  now  lost  in  vapors  blind ; 
Broad  prairie  rather,  genial,  level-lined, 
Fruitful  and  friendly  for  all  human  kind, 
Yet  also  nigh  to  heaven  and  loved  of  loftiest  stars. 


596  LOWELL 

Our  children  shall  behold  his  fame, 
The  kindly-earnest,  brave,  foreseeing  man, 
Sagacious,  patient,  dreading  praise,  not  blame, 
New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American." 

— Commemoration  Ode. 

"  There  is  Bryant,  as  quiet,  as  cool,  and  as  dignified 
As  a  smooth,  silent  iceberg,  that  never  is  ignified, 
Save  when  by  reflection  'tis  kindled  o'  nights 
With  a  semblance  of  flame  by  the  chill  Northern  Lights. 

If  he  stir  you  at  all,  it  is  just,  on  my  soul, 
Like  being  stirred  up  by  the  very  North  Pole. 

If  I  call  him  an  iceberg,  I  don't  mean  to  say 
There  is  nothing  in  that  which  is  grand  in  its  way ; 
He  is  almost  the  one  of  your  poets  that  knows 
How  much  force,  strength,  and  dignity  lie  in  repose  ; 
If  he  sometimes  fall  short,  he  is  too  wise  to  mar 
>ught's  modest  fulness  by  going  too  far." 

— A  Fable  for  Critics. 


Humorous— Satire— Brilliancy. — An  English  crit- 
ic well  defines  all  humor  as  "  a  subtle  blending  of  the  serious 
with  the  comic,"  and  adds:  "  But  the  combination  of  a 
deep  and  generous  sympathy  with  a  keen  perception  of  the 
ludicrous  is  the  substratum  of  the  finest  kind  of  humor  ;  and 
it  is  that  which  enables  *  Biglow  '  to  pass  without  any  sense  of 
discord  from  pure  satire  into  strains  of  genuine  poetry." 

"  Verse  made  only  as  satire  belongs  to  a  lower  order.  Of 
such  there  are  various  didactic  specimens.  But  wit  has  an  imag- 
inative side,  and  Humor  springs  like  Iris — all  smiles  and  tears. 
The  wit  of  poets  often  has  been  the  faculty  that  ripened  last, 
the  overflow  of  their  strength  and  experience.  In  the  '  Biglow 
Papers,'  wit  and  humor  are  united  as  in  a  composition  of  high 
grade.  .  .  .  Lowell  has  been  compared  to  Butler,  but 
'Hudibras,'  whether  as  poetry  or  historical  satire,  is  vastly 
below  the  master-work  of  the  New  England  idyllist. 
My  own  explanation  of  things  which  annoy  us  in  his  lof- 


LOWELL  597 

tier  pieces  is  that  his  every-day  genius  is  that  of  wit  and  hu- 
mor. .  .  .  Here  [in  "  The  Biglow  Papers  "]  was  now  seen 
that  maturity  of  genius,  of  which  humor  is  a  flower,  reveal- 
ing the  sound,  kind  man  within  the  poet.  .  .  .  The 
jesting  is  far  removed  from  that  clownish  gabble  which,  if  it 
still  increases,  will  shortly  add  another  to  the  list  of  offences 
that  make  killing  no  murder." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Humor  of  the  purest  strain,  but  humor  in  deadly  earnest. 
In  its  course,  as  in  that  of  a  cyclone,  it  swept  all  before  it — 
the  press,  the  church,  criticism,  scholarship —  .  .  .  the 
Mexican  war,  pleas  for  slavery,  and  public  men." — George 
William  Curtis. 

"  Mr.  Lowell  is  unquestionably  a  born  humorist.  He  pos- 
sesses a  humor  of  thought  which  is  at  once  broad  and  subtle  ; 
his  humor  of  expression  is  his  American  birthright." — H.  D. 
Trail!. 

"They  [the  "Biglow  Papers"]  were  forcible  with  the 
humor  which  distinguishes  great  men  who  keep  their  eyes  and 
ears  open.  But  besides  this  common -sense  and  this  humor, 
there  were  in  the  '  Biglow  Papers  '  a  wisdom  and  wit  which 
were  equally  forcible  and  more  rare." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"  The  '  Fable  for  Critics  '  affords  ample  illustration  of  the 
liveliness  and  sparkling  spontaneity  of  his  wit.  .  .  .  His 
wit  was  not  as  kindly  as  it  was  ready  ;  his  humor  was  always 
genial." — Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Wut's  the  use  o'  meetin'-goin' 
Every  Sabbath,  wet  or  dry, 
Ef  it's  right  to  go  amowin' 
Feller-men  like  oats  an'  rye  ? 
I  dunno  but  wut  it's  pooty 
Trainin*  round  in  bobtail  coats, — 
But  it's  curus  Christian  dooty 
This  'ere  cuttin  folk's  throats. 


598  LOWELL 

I'm  willin'  a  man  should  go  tollable  strong 

Agin  wrong  in  the  abstract,  for  thet  kind  o'  wrong 

Is  oilers  unpop'lar,  an'  never  gits  pitied, 

Because  it's  a  crime  no  one  ever  committed  ; 

But  he  mustn't  be  hard  on  partickler  sins, 

Coz  then  he'll  be  kickin'  the  peoples'  own  shins." 

— Biglow  l\ipers, 

"  The  furniture  stood  round  with  such  an  air, 
There  seemed  an  old  maid's  ghost  in  every  chair, 
Which  looked  as  it  had  scuttled  to  its  place 
And  pulled  extempore  a  Sunday  face, 
Too  smugly  proper  for  a  world  of  sin, 
Like  boys  on  whom  the  minister  comes  in. 
The  table,  fronting  you  with  icy  stare, 
Strove  to  look  witless  that  its  legs  were  bare, 
While  the  black  sofa  with  its  horsehair  pall 
Gloomed  like  a  bier  for  Comfort's  funeral." 

— Fitz  Adam's  Story. 

11  Who  always  wear  spectacles,  always  look  bilious, 
Always  keep  on  good  terms  with  each  mater-familias 
Throughout  the  whole  parish,  and  manage  to  rear 
Ten  boys  like  themselves,  on  four  hundred  a  year  ; 
Who,  fulfilling  in  turn  the  same  fearful  conditions, 
Either  preach  through  their  noses,  or  go  upon  missions. 
In  this  way  our  hero  got  safely  to  college, 
Where  he  bolted  alike  both  his  commons  and  knowledge  ; 
A  reading-machine,  always  wound  up  and  going, 
He  mastered  whatever  was  not  worth  the  knowing." 
/  —A  Fable  for  Critics. 

\f  7.  Wit. — As  distinguished  from  humor,  we  mean,  by  this 
quality,  that  form  of  mental  excitement  and  pleasure  that 
is  due  mainly  to  a  perception  of  the  incongruous.  Lowell's 
poems  abound  in  grotesquely  absurd  situations  and  relations. 
His  wit  also  appears  in  his  incomparable  puns  and  in  the  fan- 
tastic double  rhymes,  of  which  he  is  such  a  consummate  mas- 
ter. The  "Fable  for  Critics"  has  been  called  "a  hand- 
gallop  of  loose  verses. ' ' 


LOWELL  599 

"  The  '  Fable  '  is  as  full  of  puns  as  a  pudding  of  plums. 
The  good  ones  are  the  best  of  their  kind,  strung  together  like 
beads,  and  the  bad  ones  are  so  '  atrocious '  as  to  be  quite  as 
amusing.  .  .  .  No  poem  of  the  kind  in  the  language 
equals  it  in  the  two  aspects  of  vivid  genius  and  riotous 
fun.  .'  .  .  Regarded  as  a  mere  repository  of  fun, 
it  is  inimitable;  but  the  author's  are  edged  tools  rather 
than  playthings,  and  they  have  been  felt  through  the  long 
struggle.  .  .  .  One  might  believe  that  the  brilliant  rail- 
lery which  Lowell  afterward  turned  upon  the  supporters  of 
slavery  had  its  origin  in  a  reaction  from  the  monotonous  ora- 
tory of  some  of  his  associates.  The  public  was  found  to  be 
keenly  sensitive  to  the  coruscation  of  wit,  and  sorely  vulner- 
able to  the  arrows  of  ridicule.  .  .  .  Its  ["  A  Fable 
for  Critics"]  grotesque  macaronic  lines,  with  impossible 
rhymes,  its  exhaustless  store  of  double-shotted  puns,  its  keen 
analysis  and  common-sense,  make  it  one  of  the  most  enjoy- 
able of  satires.  .  .  .  The  lines  are  as  full  of  good- 
humored  counsel  as  of  pungent  wit.  .  .  .  The  sharp 
thrust  in  rustic  phrase,  the  native  wit,  and  the  irony  that 
played  upon  the  lines  [of  "  Hosea  Biglow  "],  making  them 
like  live  electric  wires,  produced  a  combination  of  mirth  and 
conviction  wholly  new.  .  .  .  ["  A  Fable  for  Critics"]  is 
the  gay  humor  of  a  youth  in  the  freedom  of  an  anonymous 
pasquinade — revelling  in  puns,  clashing  unexpected  and  all 
but  impossible  rhymes  like  cymbals,  tossing  off  grotesque  epi- 
thets and  comparisons,  and  going  in  a  break-neck  canter  like 
a  race-horse  let  loose.  .  .  .  Wit  was  as  natural  to  him  as 
breathing,  and  when  the  mood  was  on  he  could  no  more 
avoid  seeing  and  signalling  puns  than  an  inebriate  could  help 
seeing  double,  but  the  wit  and  the  puns  were  not  the  end  and 
aim  of  his  talk.  .  .  .  Lowell's  creations  are  humorous, 
though  some  of  them  scatter  witticisms  like  rice  at  a  wed- 
ding. .  .  .  It  is  not  risking  much  to  say  that  it  ["  The 
Biglow  Papers  "]  is  the  wittiest  and  best -sustained  satire  in 


600  LOWELL 

English.  ...  It  must  be  repeated,  by  way  of  explana- 
tion, that,  from  the  first  fly-leaf  to  the  colophon,  this  is  the 
only  complete  and  perfect  piece  of  grotesque  comedy  in  ex- 
istence. .  .  .  Materials  for  any  number  of  Hoods  exist 
in  it.  ...  The  wit  of  Hosea  Biglow  is  the  native  wit 
of  Lowell — instantaneous  as  lightning — and  Hosea's  common 
sense  is  Lowell's  birthright." — F.  H.  Underwood. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Let  us  glance  for  a  moment,  'tis  well  worth  the  pains, 
And  note  what  an  average  graveyard  contains  ; 

There  are  slave-drivers  quietly  whipped  underground  ; 
There  bookbinders,  done  up  in  boards,  are  fast  bound  ; 
There  card-players  wait  till  the  last  trump  be  played, 
There  all  the  choice  spirits  get  finally  laid  ; 
There  the  babe  that's  unborn  is  supplied  with  a  berth ; 
There  men  without  legs  get  their  six  feet  of  earth  ; 
There  lawyers  repose,  each  wrapped  up  in  his  case  ; 
There  seekers  of  office  are  sure  of  a  place. 

Two  dozen  of  Italy's  exiles  who  shoot  us  his 
Kaisership  daily,  stern  pen-and-ink  Brutuses, 

Nine  hundred  Teutonic  republicans  stark 

From  Vaterland's  battles  just  won — in  the  Park, 

Who  the  happy  profession  of  martyrdom  take 

Whenever  it  gives  them  a  chance  at  a  steak  ; 

Sixty-two  second  Washingtons  ;  two  or  three  Jacksons  : 

And  so  many  everythings-else  that  it  racks  one's 

Poor  memory  too  much  to  continue  the  list, 

Especially  now  they  no  longer  exist." — A  Fable  for  Critics. 

"  He  called  an  architect  in  counsel ; 
'I  want,'  said  he,  'a — you  know  what, 
(You  are  .a  builder,  I  am  Knott,) 
A  thing  complete  from  chimney-pot 
Down  to  the  very  groundsel ; 


LOWELL 


60 1 


Here's  a  half  acre  of  good  land  ; 

Just  have  it  nicely  mapped  and  planned 

And  make  your  workmen  drive  on  ; 

Meadow  there  is,  and  upland  too, 

And  I  should  like  a  water-view, 

D'  you  think  you  could  contrive  one  ? 

(Perhaps  the  pump  and  trough  would  do, 

If  painted  a  judicious  blue) 

The  woodland  I've  attended  to  ; ' 

(He  meant  three  pines  stuck  up  askew, 

Two  dead  ones  and  a  live  one.) 

'  A  pocket-full  of  rocks,  't  would  take 

To  build  a  house  of  free-stone, 

But  then  it  is  not  hard  to  make 

What  nowadays  is  the  stone  ; 

The  cunning  painter  in  a  trice 

Your  house's  outside  petrifies, 

And  people  think  it  very  gneiss 

Without  inquiring  deeper ; 

My  money  never  shall  be  thrown 

Away  on  such  a  deal  of  stone, 

When  stone  of  deal  is  cheaper." 

—  The  Unhappy  Lot  of  Mr.  Knott. 

"  He  kin'  o'  1'itered  on  the  mat, 

Some  doubtfle  o'  the  sekle, 

His  heart  kep'  goin'  pity-pat, 

But  hern  went  pity  Zekle." — The  Courtin\ 


8.  Pathos. — As  is  the  case  with  all  true  masters  of  humor, 
the  fountains  of  Lowell's  fun  lie  near  the  sources  of  his  tears. 
Such  poems  as  "The  Changeling,,"  "The  First  Snow-Fail," 
and  "The  Two  Angels  "  are  rilled  with  the  tenderest  pathos. 

"  Lowell's  wife  died,  leaving  him  in  that  gloom  from  which 
came  the  series  of  short  poems  ...  the  best  expression 
of  the  finest  side  of  the  man's  nature,  (  The  Wind-Harp/ 
'  Auf  Wiedersehen?  'After  the  Burial,'  and  'The  Dead 
House  ' — expressions  of  the  strong  passions  of  grief. 
The  only  thing  I  know  in  English  poetry  to  set  beside  them 


6O2  LOWELL 

for  genuine  pathos  is  the  «  Break,  break,  break  '  of  Tennyson." 
—  IV.J.  Stillman. 

"  If  the  test  of  poetry  be  in  its  power  over  hearts,  the  ruth 
in  this  series  [later  "  Biglow  Papers  "]  must  be  placed  in  the 
highest  rank.  The  beginning  is  quaint,  simple,  and  even 
humorous,  but  with  a  subdued  tone ;  there  is  no  intimation  of 
the  coming  pathos.  .  .  .  We  are  led,  stanza  by  stanza, 
to  the  heights  where  thought  and  feeling  become  one.  .  .  . 
They  [the  lines  in  reference  to  the  poet's  three  slain  nephews] 
are  palpitant  like  naked  nerves,  and  every  word  is  like  a  leaf 
plucked  by  Dante,  which  trickled  blood.  ...  A  letter 
to  the  Editor  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly  .  .  .  breaks  into 
an  agony  of  lament  for  the  young  heroes  fallen  in  battle,  and 
closes  with  an  apostrophe  to  Peace  that  few  Americans  .  .  . 
can  read,  even  for  the  twentieth  time,  with  dry  eyes." — F. 
If.  Underwood. 

"  Of  the  Biglow  epistles,  the  tenth  has  the  most  pathetic 
undertone.  .  .  .  His  heart  is  full  with  its  own  sorrows, 
he  half-despises  himself  '  for  rhymin' '  when  his  young  kins- 
men have  fallen  in  the  fray." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"The  deep  pathos  in  some  of  Mr.  Lowell's  poems  is  as 
striking  as  any  of  his  other  qualities.  No  common  note  was 
reached  in  'The  First  Snow-Fail;'  ...  he  has  written 
nothing  so  touching  and  so  exquisite  as  'The  Changeling.' 
.  .  .  It  seems  to  us  that  the  pathetic  and  unadorned  sim- 
plicity of  this  poem  has  never  been  surpassed  by  any  English 
writer.  .  .  .  The  strongest  utterances  are  the  poems  and 
the  ballads  in  which  the  author  deals  with  human  emotion. 
For  an  example  take  *  The  Dead  House,'  whose  pathos  must 
find  its  way  to  any  heart.  ...  In  some  respects  '  The 
Cathedral '  deserves  to  rank  as  the  highest  of  all  of  Mr.  Low- 
ell's poetical  productions.  .  .  .  It  is  deeply  introspective, 
and  is  charged  with  pathetic  memories  of  the  long  ago." — G. 
B.  Smith. 


LOWELL  603 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

She  had  been  with  us  scarce  a  twelvemonth, 

And  it  hardly  seemed  a  day, 

When  a  troop  of  wandering  angels 

Stole  my  little  daughter  away  ; 

Or  perhaps  those  heavenly  zingari 

But  loosed  the  hampering  strings, 

And  when  they  had  opened  her  cage-door, 

My  little  bird  used  her  wings. 

But  they  left  in  her  stead  a  changeling, 

A  little  angel  child, 

That  seems  like  her  bud  in  full  blossom, 

And  smiles  as  she  never  smiled  : 

When  I  wake  in  the  morning,  I  see  it 

Where  she  always  used  to  lie, 

And  I  feel  as  weak  as  a  violet 

Alone  'neath  the  awful  sky." — The  Changeling. 

While  'way  o'erhead,  ez  sweet  an'  low 
Ez  distant  bells  thet  ring  for  meetin* 

The  wedged  wiP  geese  their  bugles  blow, 
Further  an'  further  south  retreatin'. 

The  farm-smokes,  sweetes'  sight  on  air-th, 

Slow  thru  the  winter  air  a-shrinkin' 
Seem  kin'  o'  sad,  an  'roun'  the  hearth 

Of  empty  places  set  me  thinkin.'  " 

— Bigloiv  Papers. 

"  I  thought  of  a  mound  in  sweet  Auburn 
Where  a  little  headstone  stood  ; 
How  the  flakes  were  folding  it  gently, 
As  did  robins  the  babes  in  the  wood. 

I  remembered  the  gradual  patience 
That  fell  from  that  cloud  like  snow, 
Flake  by  flake,  healing  and  hiding 
The  scar  that  renewed  our  woe. 


604  LOWELL 


And  again  to  the  child  I  whispered, 

*  The  snow  that  husheth  all, 

Darling,  the  merciful  Father 

Alone  can  make  it  fall ! '  "—  The  First  Snow-Fall. 


K*  9.  Deep  Religious  Instinct.— Although  Lowell  often 
ridiculed  and  always  rebelled  against  that  narrow  "ortho- 
doxy" in  the  midst  of  which  he  was  reared,  his  poems  prove 
him  to  be  possessed  of  a  profound  religious  instinct. 

"  The  deep  religious  instinct,  emancipated  from  all  forms, 
but  vibrating  with  the  fitful  certainty  of  an  Aeolian  harp  to 
'  the  wind  that  bloweth  where  it  listeth  ' — this  is  the  first  thing 
in  Lowell's  mind,  as  it  is  the  second  in  Longfellow's,  and  the 
third  in  Bryant's." — H.  R.  Haweis. 

"  The  obvious  characteristic  of  the  poems  [those  first  pub- 
lished in  the  volume  with  the  "  Legend  of  Brittany  "]  is  their 
high  religious  spirit.  It  is  not  a  mild  and  passive  morality  that 
we  perceive,  but  the  aggressive  force  of  primitive  Christianity. 
Though  the  physical  aspect  of  evolution  had  engaged 
his  attention,  as  it  has  that  of  all  intellectual  men,  and  had 
commanded  perhaps  a  startling  and  dubious  assent,  yet  his 
strong  spiritual  nature  recoiled  in  horror  from  the  materialistic 
application  of  the  doctrine  to  the  origin  of  things.  Force 
could  never  be  to  him  the  equivalent  of  spirit,  nor  law  the 
substitute  for  God.  In  conversation  once  upon  the  'prom- 
ise and  potency'  phrases  of  Tyndall,  he  exclaimed  with 
energy,  'Let  whoever  will  believe  that  the  idea  of  Hamlet 
or  Lear  was  developed  from  a  clod;  I  will  not."1 — F.  ff, 
Underwood. 

11  In  '  What  Rabbi  Jehosha  Said,'  and  many  other  poems, 
he  teaches  the  grandeur  of  Christian  charity  and  Christian 
humility.  In  fact,  he  is  one  of  the  profoundest  preachers  in 
the  whole  brotherhood  of  song." — G.  B.  Smith. 

"  He  is  the  poet  of  pluck  and  action  and  purpose,  of  the 


LOWELL  605 

gayety  and  liberty  of  virtue.  .  .  .  His  poetical  perform- 
ance might  sometimes,  no  doubt,  be  more  intensely  lyrical, 
but  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  could  be  more  intensely  moral — I 
mean,  of  course,  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  term.  His  play  is 
as  good  as  a  game  in  the  open  air  ;  but  when  he  is  serious 
he  is  as  serious  as  Wordsworth  and  much  more  compact." 
— Henry  James. 

"That  justice  and  law  and  righteousness  are  things  for 
which  any  man  with  an  immortal  soul  in  him  would  willingly 
die — these  formed  the  stock  of  axioms  with  which  the  son  of 
the  Massachusetts  minister  started  in  life.  .  .  .  There  is 
hardly  anything  which  Lowell  wrote  that  is  not  calculated 
and  intended  to  awaken  worthy  ambition,  generous  effort, 
and  an  earnest  appreciation  of  purity,  nobility,  and  truth, 
whether  in  literature  or  life.  .  .  .  It  is  pleasant  in  his 
last  poems  to  note  how  the  generous  enthusiasm  for  progress, 
the  faith  in  an  ideal,  which  were  the  legacies  of  his  early  train- 
ing, remained,  through  all  the  bitterness  of  controversy  and 
after  the  militant  scorn  for  the  mean  and  unworthy  had  died 
down  into  a  placid  tolerance." — Sidney  Low. 

"  At  the  root  of  his  personality  lay  a  deep  moral  earnest- 
ness. Mr.  Lowell  was  of  Puritart  descent ;  and  though  the 
training  of  three  generations  had  refined  all  Puritan  acerbity 
and  narrowness  out  of  him,  yet  the  aggressive  moral  temper 
of  the  Puritan  was  still  in  his  blood.  .  .  .  His  own 
ideas  were  rather  moral  than  merely  literary  ;  and  all  his  best 
writing,  in  poetry,  at  all  events,  has  a  distinct  ethical  motive." 
— C.  T.  Winchester. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

There  is  no  broken  reed  so  poor  and  base, 
No  rush,  the  bending  tilt  of  swamp-fly  blue, 
But  he  therewith  the  ravening  wolf  can  chase, 
And  guide  his  flock  to  springs  and  pastures  new  ; 


606  LOWELL 

Through  ways  unlocked  for  and  through  many  lands, 
Far  from  the  rich  folds  built  with  human  hands, 
The  gracious  foot-prints  of  His  love  I  trace. 

Slowly  the  Bible  of  the  race  is  writ, 
And  not  on  paper  leaves  nor  leaves  of  stone  ; 
Each  age,  each  kindred,  adds  a  verse  to  it, 
Texts  of  despair  or  hope  or  joy  or  moan. 

If  the  chosen  soul  could  never  be  alone 

In  deep  mid-silence,  open-doored  to  God, 

No  greatness  ever  had  been  dreamed  or  done  ; 

Among  dull  hearts  a  prophet  never  grew ; 

The  nurse  of  full-grown  souls  is  solitude."—  Columbus. 

"  I  had  a  little  daughter, 
And  she  was  given  to  me 
To  lead  me  gently  backward 
To  the  Heavenly  Father's  knee, 
That  I,  by  the  force  of  nature, 
Might  in  some  dim  wise  divine 
The  depth  of  his  infinite  patience 
To  this  way  ward  soul 

Changing. 

10.  Idyllic  Power.— Lowell  vies  with  Whittier  in  his 
rare  ability  to  picture  homely  rustic  scenes  and  to  bring  out 
the  latent  poetry  concealed  in  rural  home  life. 

"The  '  Biglow  Papers'  were  the  first,  and  are  the  best, 
metrical  presentation  of  Yankee  character  in  its  thought,  dia- 
lect, and  manners.  .  .  .  Never  sprang  the  flower  of  art 
from  a  more  unpromising  soil ;  yet  these  are  eclogues  as  true 
as  those  of  Theocritus  or  Burns.  .  .  .  This  bucolic  idyl 
["  The  CourthV  "]  is  without  a  counterpart ;  no  richer  juice 
can  be  pressed  from  the  wild  grape  of  the  Yankee  soil." 
— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  This  ["  The  Coiirtin'  "]  is  the  most  genuine  of  our  native 
idyls.  It  affects  one  like  coming  upon  a  new  and  quaint 


(WELL 


607 


blossoming  orchid,  or  hearing  Schumann's  '  Einsame  Blunted 
.  .  .  In  '  The  Courtin'  '  and  '  Somthin'  in  the  Pastoral 
Line  '  he  has  shown  for  the  first  time  the  idyllic  side  of  New 
England  life."—  F.  H.  Underwood. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Zekle  crep'  up  quite  unbeknown 
An'  peeked  in  thru'  the  winder, 
An*  there  sot  Huldy  all  alone, 
'ith  no  one  nigh  to  hender.     .     . 

The  very  room,  coz  she  was  in, 
Seemed  warm  from  floor  to  ceilin'  ; 
An  she  looked  ful  ez  rosy  agin 
Es  the  apples  she  was  peelin'.     .     , 


She  heered  a  foot,  an*  knowed  it  tu, 

A-raspin'  on  the  scraper, — 

All  ways  to  once  her  feelins  flew 

Like  sparks  in  burnt-up  paper." — The  Courtirt, 

"  Here, 

The  scissors-grinder,  pausing,  doffs  his  hat,  ,    • 

And  lets  the  kind  breeze,  with  its  delicate  fan, 
Winnow  the  heat  from  out  his  dank  gray  hair, — 
A  grimy  Ulysses,  a  much-wandered  man, 
Whose  feet  are  known  to  all  the  populous  ways, 
And  many  men  and  manners  he  hath  seen, 
Not  without  fruit  of  solitary  thought." 

—  Under  the  Willows. 

"  Here,  sometimes,  in  this  paradise  of  shade, 
Rippled  with  western  winds,  the  dusty  Tramp, 
Seeing  the  treeless  causey  burn  beyond, 
Halts  to  unroll  his  bundle  of  strange  food 
And  munch  an  unearned  meal. 


6O8  LOWELL 

I  bait  him  with  my  match-box  and  my  pouch, 

Nor  grudge  the  uncostly  sympathy  of  smoke, 

His  equal  now,  divinely  unemployed. 

Some  smack  of  Robin  Hood  is  in  the  man, 

Some  secret  league  with  wild  wood-wandering  things  ; 

He  is  our  ragged  Duke,  our  barefoot  Earl, 

By  right  of  birth  exonerate  from  toil, 

Who  levies  rent  from  us  his  tenants  all, 

And  serves  the  state  by  merely  being." 

—  Under  the  Willows. 

II.  Knowledge  of  and  Faith  in  Human  Nature. 

— "  Man  is  the  great  object  of  Lowell's  song,  because  the 
world  must  be  advanced  to  attain  the  full  stature  of  great- 
ness. .  .  .  His  ethical  code  is  healthful  and  refreshing  ; 
he  analyses  human  nature  with  all  the  magical  power,  if  also 
with  the  tenderness,  of  the  skilfullest  of  soul-physicians.  He 
is  the  best  of  metaphysicians,  because  his  conclusions  are 
based,  not  upon  theory,  but  upon  heart-throbs  of  that  human- 
ity whose  soul  he  endeavors  to  pierce.  .  .  .  His  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature  is  very  profound." — G.  B.  Smith. 

11  Next  to  his  deep  love  of  God  is  our  poet's  love  of  man. 
It  is  the  love  of  the  man  in  all  men,  of  the  womanly  in  every 
woman — the  true  enthusiasm  of  humanity — which 

4  Sees  beneath  the  foulest  faces  lurking 
One  God-built  shrine  of  reverence  and  love.'  " 

— H.  R.  Haweis. 

"With  all  the  faith  he  had  in  his  own  people  of  the  past, 
he  looked  forward  to  the  new  race  which  is  yet  forming  in  our 
womb,  and  nowhere  in  our  literature  is  there  more  direct  ex- 
pression of  the  national  faith  in  mere  manhood  than  in  a  few 
great  lines  of  these  patriotic  poems,  or,  more  soberly  and  ex- 
plicitly, in  the  essay  upon  Democracy." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 
"  There  was  another  phase  of  Lowell's  teaching  which  was 
not  less  helpful,  and  that  was  his  inexhaustible  faith  in  the  in- 
extinguishable •  spark  of  God  '  in  the  human  heart." — W.  T. 
Stead. 


LOWELL  609 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  often  wonder  what  the  Mountain  thinks 
Of  French  boots  creaking  o'er  his  breathless  brinks, 
Or  how  the  Sun  would  scare  the  chattering  crowd, 
If  some  fine  day  he  chanced  to  think  aloud. 
I,  who  love  Nature  much  as  sinners  can, 
Love  her  where  she  most  grandeur  shows, — in  man  : 
Here  I  find  mountain,  forest,  cloud,  and  sun, 
River  and  sea,  and  glows  when  day  is  done  ; 
Nay,  where  she  makes  grotesques,  and  moulds  in  jest 
The  clown's  cheap  clay,  I  find  unfading  zest. 
The  natural  instincts  year  by  year  retire, 
As  deer  shrink  northward  from  the  settler's  fire, 
And  he  who  loves  the  wild  game-flavor  more 
Than  city  feasts,  where  every  man's  a  bore 
To  every  other  man,  must  seek  it  where 
The  steamer's  throb  and  railway's  iron  blare 
Have  not  yet  startled  with  their  punctual  stir 
The  shy,  wood-wandering  brood  of  Character." 

— Fitz  Adairfs  Story. 

"  And  sees,  beneath  the  foulest  faces  lurking, 
One  God-built  shrine  of  reverence  and  love; 

Who  feels  that  God  and  Heaven's  great  deeps  are  nearer 
Him  to  whose  heart  his  fellow-man  is  nigh, 
Who  doth  not  hold  his  soul's  own  freedom  dearer 
Than  that  of  all  his  brethren,  low  or  high." — Ode. 

"  Good  never  comes  unmixed,  or  so  it  seems, 
Having  two  faces,  as  some  images 
Are  carved,  of  foolish  gods  ;   one  face  is  ill ; 
But  one  heart  lies  beneath,  and  that  is  good, 
As  are  all  hearts,  when  we  explore  their  depths. 
Therefore,  great  heart,  bear  up  !  thou  art  but  type 
Of  what  all  lofty  spirits  endure,  that  fain 
Would  win  men  back  to  strength  and  peace  through  love  : 
Each  hath  his  lonely  peak,  and  on  each  heart 
39 


6lO  LOWELL 

Envy,  or  scorn,  or  hatred,  tears  life-long 
With  vulture  beak  ;   yet  the  high  soul  is  left  ; 
And  faith,  which  is  but  hope  grown  wise,  and  love, 
And  patience  which  at  last  shall  overcome." 

— Prometheus. 

12.  Sectionalism— Nationalism.— Quite  as  much  as 
Whittier,  though  in  another  way,  Lowell  proclaims  himself  a 
son  of  New  England  and  of  America.  He  gloried  in  being 
an  American.  It  has  been  justly  said  of  him  that  "  he  did 
more  than  any  other  man  to  command  respect  for  our  institu- 
tions "  in  the  minds  of  all  Europeans.  During  his  later  years 
Lowell  was  charged  by  that  class  of  pseudo-statesmen  against 
whom  he  had  directed  some  of  his  keenest  darts,  with  being 
un-American.  Never  was  a  more  baseless  slander  uttered.  In 
a  recently-published  letter  addressed  to  his  friend,  Joel  Ben- 
ton,  and  bearing  date  of  January,  1876,  Lowell  indignantly, 
exclaims:  "These  fellows  have  no  notion  of  what  love  of 
country  means.  It  is  in  my  very  blood  and  bones.  If  I  am 
not  an  American,  who  ever  was?  I  am  no  pessimist,  nor  ever 
was.  .  .  .  What  fills  me  with  doubt  and  dismay  is  the 
degradation  of  the  moral  tone.  Is  it,  or  is  it  not,  a  result  of 
Democracy?  Is  ours  a  government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  for  the  people,  or  a  Kakistocracy  rather,  for  the  bene- 
fit of  knaves  at  the  cost  of  fools?  Democracy  is,  after  all, 
nothing  more  than  an  experiment,  like  another  ;  and  I  know 
only  one  way  of  judging  it — by  its  results.  Democracy  in 
itself  is  no  more  sacred  than  monarchy.  It  is  man  who 
is  sacred.  ...  It  is  honor,  justice,  culture  that  make 
liberty  invaluable.  .  .  .  Forgive  me  for  this  long  letter 
of  justification,  which  I  am  willing  to  write  for  your  friendly 
eye,  though  I  should  scorn  to  make  any  public  defence.  Let 
the  tenor  of  my  life  and  writings  defend  me." 

"He  is  an  American  of  the  Americans,  alive  to  the  idea 
and  movement  of  the  whole  country,  singularly  independent 
in  his  tests  of  its  men  and  products — from  whatever  section  or 


LOWELL  6ll 

in  however  unpromising  a  form  they  chance  to  appear.  .  .  . 
He  seems  to  represent  New  England  more  variously  than 
either  of  his  comrades.  We  find  in  his  work,  as  in  theirs,  her 
loyalty  and  moral  purpose.  She  has  been  at  cost  for  his  train- 
ing, and  he  in  turn  has  read  her  heart,  honoring  her  as  a 
mother  before  the  world  and  seeing  beauty  in  her  common 
garb  and  speech.  .  .  .  To  him  the  Eastern  States  are 
what  the  fathers,  as  he  has  said,  desired  to  found — no  new 
Jerusalem  but  a  New  England  and,  if  it  might  be,  a  better 
one.  His  poetry  has  the  strength,  the  tenderness,  and  the 
defects  of  the  down-East  temper." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Lowell  was  an  intense  New  Englander.  There  is  no  finer 
figure  of  the  higher  Puritan  type.  The  New  England  soil, 
from  which  he  sprang,  was  precious  to  him.  The  New  England 
legend,  the  New  England  language,  New  England  character 
and  achievement,  were  all  his  delight  and  familiar  study. 
Burns  did  not  give  to  the  Scottish  tongue  a  nobler 
immortality  than  Lowell  gave  to  the  dialect  of  New  England. 
Literature  was  his  pursuit,  but  patriotism  was  his 
passion.  His  love  of  country  was  that  of  a  lover  for  his 
mistress.  .  .  .  Nowhere  in  literature  is  there  a  more 
magnificent  and  majestic  personification  of  a  country  whose 
name  is  sacred  to  its  children,  nowhere  a  profounder  passion 
of  patriotic  loyalty,  than  the  closing  lines  of  the  '  Com- 
memoration Ode.'  The  American  whose  heart,  swayed  by 
that  lofty  music,  does  not  thrill  and  palpitate  with  solemn 
joy  and  high  resolve,  does  not  yet  know  what  it  is  to  be  an 
American.  Nobody  who  could  adequately  depict  the  Yankee 
ever  knew  him  as  Lowell  knew  him,  for  he  was  at  heart  the 
Yankee  that  he  drew.  .  .  .  The  <Bi glow  Papers'  are  dis- 
tinctively American.  .  .  .  They  could  have  been  written 
nowhere  else  but  in  Yankee  New  England  by  a  New  England 
Yankee."— George  William  Curtis. 

"  His  America  was  a  country  worth  hearing  about,  a  mag- 
nificent conception,  an  admirably  consistent  and  lovable  ob- 


6l2  LOWELL 

ject  of  allegiance.  If  the  sign  that  in  Europe  one  knew  him 
best  by  was  his  intense  national  consciousness,  one  felt  that 
this  consciousness  could  not  sit  lightly  on  a  man  in  whom  it 
was  the  strongest  form  of  piety.  .  .  .  New  England 
was  heroic,  for  he  felt  in  his  pulses  the  whole  history  of 
her  origines.  .  .  .  One  felt  in  his  patriotism  the  depth 
of  passion  that  hums  through  much  of  his  finest  verse 
— almost  the  only  passion  that,  to  my  sense,  his  poetry 
contains — the  accent  of  chivalry,  of  the  lover,  the  knight 
ready  to  do  battle  for  his  mistress.  Above  all,  it  was  a  partic- 
ular allegiance  to  New  England  ;  ...  it  was  impossible 
to  know  him  without  a  sense  that  he  had  a  rare  divination  of 
the  hard  realities  of  her  past." — Henry  James. 

"  In  the  poet's  writing  we  find  the  life  and  passion  of  New 
England  to  a  verity  and  the  best  thought  of  our  people 
at  large.  .  .  .  Lowell  will  chiefly  be  remembered  as 
poet  because  of  his  New  England  heart  and  voice — his  idyls 
of  the  Junes  and  Decembers  of  Massachusetts  and  his  verse  of 
anti-slavery  and  patriotism." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"The  elementary  fact  about  Lowell,  which  stands  at  the 
threshold  of  every  discussion  of  his  works,  is  that  he  was  born 
and  bred  a  New  Englander.  It  is  a  fact  which  he  himself 
does  not  permit  his  readers  to  forget.  In  his  prose  and  in  his 
verse  he  goes  back  to  it  again  and  again.  Literature  will 
know  him  longest,  not  as  the  critic  nor  as  the  writer  of  elegies, 
lyrics,  and  odes,  but  as  the  poet  who  gave  literary  form  and 
value  to  the  indigenous  humor,  rhetoric,  and  satire  of  the 
farmers  of  New  England." — Sidney  Low. 

"  If  there  was  one  quality  more  than  another  that  summed 
up  Lowell's  characteristics,  it  was  his  Americanism. 
Longfellow    and    Bryant   are   essentially    English,    modified 
slightly  by  their  American  environment." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 


LOWELL  613 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  first  drew  in  New  England's  air,  and  from  her  hearty  breast 
Sucked  in  the  tyrant-hating  milk  that  will  not  let  me  rest ; 
And  if  my  words  seem  treason  to  the  dullard  and  the  tame, 
'Tis  but  my  Bay-state  dialect — our  fathers  spoke  the  same." 

"  O  Beautiful !  my  Country  !  ours  once  more  ! 
Smoothing  thy  gold  of  war-dishevelled  hair 
O'er  such  sweet  brows  as  never  others  wore, 
And  letting  thy  set  lips, 
Freed  from  wrath's  pale  eclipse, 
The  rosy  edges  of  their  smile  lay  bare  ; 
What  words  divine  of  lover  or  of  poet 
Could  tell  our  love  and  make  thee  know  it, 
Among  the  nations  bright  beyond  compare  ?  " 

— Commemoration  Ode. 

"  For,  O,  my  country,  touched  by  thee, 
The  gray  hairs  gather  back  their  gold  ; 
Thy  thought  sets  all  my  pulses  free ; 
The  heart  refuses  to  be  old  ; 
The  love  is  all  that  I  can  see. 
Not  to  thy  natal  day  belong 
Time's  prudent  doubt  or  age's  wrong, 
But  gifts  of  gratitude  and  song  : 
Unsummoned  crowd  the  thankful  words, 
As  sap  in  spring-time  floods  the  tree, 
Foreboding  the  return  of  birds, 
For  all  that  thou  hast  been  to  me  !  " 

— An  Ode  for  the  Fourth  of  July. 

13.  Melody — Classical  Finish. — "The  public  was 
right  in  its  liking  for  'The  Changeling,'  '  She  Came  and 
Went,'  and  '  The  First  Snow-Fall, '  than  which  there  are  few 
more  touching  lyrics  of  the  affections.  .  .  .  The  public 
keeps  in  store  for  him  the  adage  of  the  wilful  songster.  That 
he  can  sing  was  discovered  at  the  outset.  .  .  .  He  is  all 


6 14  LOWELL 

poet,  and  the  blithest,  most  unstudied  songster  on  the  old 
Bay  Shore.  .  .  .  Especially  in  his  shorter  lyrics,  there  is 
a  perfect  melody,  real  music,  which  has  a  charm  apart  from 
the  meaning  of  the  verse." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"These  poems  [on  Garrison,  Phillips,  etc.],  especially  that 
on  '  The  Present  Crisis,'  have  a  Tyrtean  resonance,  a  stately 
rhetorical  rhythm,  that  make  their  dignity  of  thought,  their 
intense  feeling  and  picturesque  imagery,  superbly  effective  in 
recitation." — George  William  Curtis. 

"The  terseness,  ease,  and  finish  of  these  lines  [Lowell's 
shorter  lyrics],  in  which  compliment  blends  with  the  wisdom 
of  life,  and  the  whole  is  subdued  within  the  range  of  personal 
talk  from  friend  to  friend,  are  qualities  unique  in  our  poetry, 
and  recall  the  modes  of  utterance  of  a  more  polished,  lettered 
age,  when  intellect  and  manners  held  their  own  beside  emo- 
tion, and  the  literary  life  was  more  complete  in  manly  pow- 
ers."—£.  E.  Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  saw  the  twinkle  of  white  feet, 

I  saw  the  flash  of  robes  descending  ; 
Before  her  ran  an  influence  fleet, 

That  bowed  my  heart  like  barley  bending.     .     .     . 

Coy  Hebe  flies  from  those  that  woo, 

And  shuns  the  hands  would  seize  upon  her  ; 

Follow  thy  life,  and  she  will  sue 
To  pour  for  thee  the  cup  of  honor." — Hebe. 

"  In  the  twilight  deep  and  silent 
Comes  thy  spirit  unto  mine, 
When  the  moonlight  and  the  starlight 
Over  cliff  and  woodland  shine, 
And  the  quiver  of  the  rive'r 
Seems  a  thrill  of  joy  benign."— Reverie. 


LOWELL 

"  All  things  are  sad  : — 
I  go  and  ask  of  Memory, 
That  she  tell  sweet  tales  to  me 
To  make  me  glad  ; 
And  she  takes  me  by  the  hand, 
Leadeth  to  old  places, 
Showeth  the  old  faces 
In  her  hazy  mirage-land  ; 
Oh,  her  voice  is  sweet  and  low, 
And  her  eyes  are  fresh  to  mine 
As  the  dew 
Gleaming  through 
The  half-unfolded  Eglantine, 
Long  ago,  long  ago  ! 
But  I  feel  that  I  am  only 
Yet  more  sad  and  yet  more  lonely ! " — Song. 


6i5 


LONGFELLOW,  1807-1882 

Biographical  Outline. — Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow, 
born  in  Portland,  Mass,  (afterward  Maine),  February  27, 
1807,  of  parents  descended  on  both  sides  from  English  an- 
cestry ;  father  a  lawyer  of  high  standing,  a  Harvard  classmate 
of  Channing  and  Judge  Story,  and  at  one  time  a  member  of 
Congress  ;  Longfellow  had  four  brothers  and  four  sisters  ;  as  a 
boy  he  manifests  the  gentleness  so  characteristic  of  his  poems, 
disliking  violent  games,  noises,  etc. ;  he  has  early  access  to 
the  best  English  classics,  and  is  especially  fond  of  Cowper, 
Ossian,  and  Washington  Irving  ;  he  is  reared  strictly,  although 
he  goes,  with  his  family  and  church,  into  the  earlier  forms  of 
Unitarianism  and,  as  a  young  man,  takes  singing  and  dancing 
lessons ;  he  enters  a  private  school  at  the  age  of  five,  but  soon 
withdraws,  disgusted  with  the  companionship  of  rough  boys  ;  at 
six  he  enters  the  Portland  Academy,  and  is  "  half  through  his 
Latin  grammar"  before  he  is  seven  ;  among  his  teachers  at 
the  school  was  Jacob  Abbott ;  as  a  boy  Longfellow  is  hand- 
some, frank,  and  retiring ;  his  school  vacations  are  spent  on 
the  farm  of  his  grandfather,  Judge  Longfellow,  at  Graham 
Corners,  near  Portland,  and  at  Hiram,  where  his  maternal 
grandfather,  General  Wadsworth,  of  Revolutionary  fame,  and 
also  a  Harvard  graduate,  had  an  estate  of  7,000  acres  ;  Long- 
fellow's first  published  poem,  "  The  Battle  of  Lovell's  Pond," 
commemorating  an  Indian  fight  at  a  pond  near  Hiram,  ap- 
pears anonymously  in  the  Portland  Gazette,  November  20, 
1820  (the  lines  on  "Mr.  Finney  and  his  Turnip,"  once  so 
widely  published  as  Longfellow's  first  poem,  are  not  his)  ; 
about  this  time  he  forms  a  literary  partnership  with  a  boy 
named  William  Browne,  and  together  they  write  plays,  epi- 

616 


.ONGFELLOW  6i; 

grams,  and  "tragedies;"  Longfellow's  youthful  feelings  and 
experiences  are  afterward  expressed  in  the  poem  "My  Lost 
Youth." 

Longfellow  enters  Bowdoin  College,  of  which  his  father  was 
a  trustee,  in  1821,  but  does  the  work  of  Freshman  year  at 
home,  and  begins  his  residence  at  Brunswick  in  1822,  rooming 
with  his  elder  brother  in  the  house  where  Mrs.  Stowe  after- 
ward wrote  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin;"  in  college  Longfellow 
maintains  a  high  rank,  and  is  noted  for  his  refined  manners 
and  happy  temperament ;  he  confesses  that  he  "  cares  little 
about  politics  or  anything  of  the  kind  ;  "  in  the  winter  vaca- 
tion of  1823-24  he  visits  Boston  and  dances  at  "  a  splendid 
ball"  given  at  Cambridge  in  honor  of  the  Russian  Consul; 
while  in  college  he  contributes  to  a  Portland  journal  several 
poems  not  thought  worth  reprinting  and  to  the  American 
Monthly  Magazine  several  prose  articles  ;  in  November,  1824, 
he  publishes  in  the  U.  S.  Military  Gazette  a  poem  entitled 
"Thanksgiving,"  which  shows  plainly  the  influence  of  Bry- 
ant, who  was  then  contributing  to  the  same  periodical ;  dur- 
ing 1825  Longfellow  publishes  in  the  Gazette  sixteen  poems, 
of  which  five  were  reprinted  in  "Voices  of  the  Night,"  his 
first  volume  of  poems ;  he  also  contributes  to  the  Gazette  three 
prose  essays;  at  this  time,  when  Longfellow  was  only  seven- 
teen, his  name  was  "  honorably  mentioned  "  in  the  Galaxy 
with  those  of  Bryant  (then  already  famous)  and  Percival,  and 
Longfellow's  poem  "Autumnal  Nightfall"  was  attributed  to 
Bryant;  in  March,  1824,  he  writes  to  his  father :  "I  am 
anxious  to  know  what  you  intend  to  make  of  me.  .  .  . 
I  hardly  think  nature  intended  me  for  the  bar,  the  pulpit,  or 
the  dissecting-room.  I  am  altogether  in  favor  of  the  farmer's 
life  ;  "  while  at  Bowdoin  he  unites  with  five  fellow -students  in 
forming  a  Unitarian  club,  and  disseminates  Unitarian  tracts ; 
as  early  as  December,  1824,  he  proposes  to  his  father  to  allow 
him  to  spend  a  year  at  Harvard  after  graduation,  where  he 
means  to  study  history,  literature,  and  Italian,  and  after  which 


6l8  LONGFELLOW 

he  proposes  to  attach  himself  to  some  literary  journal  as' a 
means  of  livelihood  ;  he  adds:  "The  fact  is,  I  most  eagerly 
aspire  after  future  eminence  in  literature.  My  whole  soul 
burns  most  ardently  for  it,  and  every  earthly  thought  centres 
in  it.  .  .  .  I  will  be  eminent  in  something;  "  at  gradu- 
ation, in  September,  1825,  he  stands  fourth  in  a  class  of  thirty- 
eight  ;  immediately  after  Commencement  he  is  offered  the 
newly  established  chair  of  modern  languages  at  Bowdoin,  on 
the  condition  that  he  visit  Europe  to  prepare  himself  for  the 
place ;  he  remains  at  Portland,  awaiting  mild  weather  for  his 
ocean  voyage,  till  May,  1826,  meantime  reading  a  little 
Blackstone  in  his  father's  office,  but  devoting  most  of  his  time 
to  writing  ;  during  this  winter  he  writes  "  Autumn,"  "  Mus- 
ings," "The  Burial  of  the  Minnesink,"  and  "  The  Song  of 
the  Birds ;  "  he  starts  for  Europe  by  way  of  Boston,  North- 
ampton, Albany,  and  New  York  early  in  May,  1826  ;  at 
Northampton  Dr.  Channing  gives  him  letters  to  Irving, 
Southey,  and  Professor  Eichorn  of  Gottingen ;  he  reaches 
Havre  June  i5th,  after  a  month's  voyage,  and  journeys  by  dili- 
gence to  Paris,  where  he  remains  till  February,  1827,  spending 
the  warm  months  of  the  summer  at  Auteuil  and  making  a 
pedestrian  tour  along  the  Loire  and  Cher  through  Orleans, 
Tivher,  Blois,  Amboise,  Tours,  Vendorae,  and  Chartres ;  at 
Paris  he  meets  Cooper  and  Sidney  Smith  ;  he  leaves  Paris  for 
Madrid  late  in  February,  1827,  travelling  by  way  of  Bordeaux, 
Bayonne,  Tolosa,  and  Burgos ;  at  Madrid  he  comes  into  close 
social  relations  with  Alexander  Everett,  then  American  Min- 
ister to  Spain,  and  with  Washington  Irving,  then  writing  his 
"  Life  of  Columbus  ;  "  Longfellow  visits  Segovia  and  the  Es- 
corial ;  he  studies  Spanish  industriously,  refusing  to  return  to 
America  "  a  mere  charlatan,"  saying,  "  though  I  might  deceive 
others  as  to  the  extent  of  my  knowledge,  I  cannot  so  easily 
deceive  myself;  "  in  September,  1827,  he  leaves  Madrid  for 
Italy,  travelling  by  way  of  Cordova,  Seville,  Cadiz,  Gibraltar, 
Malaga,  Granada,  Marseilles,  Toulon,  Nice,  Genoa,  and  Pisa 


LONGFELLOW  619 

to  Florence,  where  he  remains  several  weeks  and  sees  much 
brilliant  society ;  he  spends  the  spring  and  early  summer  of 
1828  in  Naples  and  Rome,  and  is  dangerously  ill  at  Rome  in 
July  ;  he  convalesces  at  Arricia,  returns  to  Rome,  and  remains 
till  December,  and  then  goes  to  Dresden  by  way  of  Venice, 
Verona,  Bologna,  Ferrara,  Padua,  Trieste,  Vienna,  and 
Prague  ;  meantime  he  learns  that  the  trustees  of  Bowdoin  have 
withdrawn  their  offer  of  a  professorship  because  of  a  lack  of 
funds,  and  have  offered  him  instead  an  instructorship,  which 
he  promptly  declines  ;  by  this  time  (December,  1828)  he 
has  acquired  a  fluent  command  of  French,  Spanish,  Portuguese, 
and  Italian  ;  he  reaches  Dresden  late  in  December,  and  settles 
down  to  the  study  of  German,  greatly  aided  socially  by  letters 
of  introduction  from  Irving  ;  late  in  February  he  goes  to  Got- 
tingen  to  join  his  friend  Preble  ;  in  March,  1829,  he  writes 
to  his  sister:  "My  poetic  career  is  finished.  Since  I  left 
home  I  have  hardly  put  two  lines  together;  "  in  the  spring 
of  1829  he  takes  a  vacation  in  England,  and  returns  through 
Holland  to  Gottingen  and  his  German  studies  ;  in  May,  1829, 
he  begins  to  write  "  a  kind  of  sketch-book  of  scenes  in  France. 
Spain,  and  Italy;  "  he  is  recalled  in  June,  1829,  by  the  danger- 
ous illness  of  his  sister  and  by  the  refusal  of  his  father  to  sup- 
ply funds  for  a  longer  European  residence ;  he  reaches  New 
York  August  n,  1829,  after  the  death  of  his  sister  Elizabeth. 
After  again  refusing  a  proffered  instructorship  at  Bowdoin, 
he  is  elected,  September  i,  1829,  professor  of  modern  lan- 
guages at  a  salary  of  $800  a  year,  and  is  also  made  librarian 
with  an  additional  salary  of  $100  ;  he  takes  up  his  work  at 
once,  and  begins  by  translating  for  his  pupils  a  small  French 
grammar  and  editing  a  collection  of  French  proverbs  and  a 
Spanish  reader  ;  at  the  Commencement  of  1830  he  delivers  his 
inaugural  address  on  the  origin  and  growth  of  the  languages  and 
literature  of  Southern  Europe  ;  in  1831  he  begins  to  contribute 
to  the  North  American  Review,  then  edited  by  his  friend 
Alexander  Everett;  in  September,  1831,  he  marries  Mary 


620  LONGFELLOW 

Storer  Potter,  the  daughter  of  a  Portland  neighbor  ;  he  reads 
the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem  at  Bowdoin  in  September,  1832,  and 
repeats  it  by  request  at  Harvard  in  1833,  in  connection  with 
an  oration  by  Edward  Everett ;  he  publishes  the  first  five 
sketches  of  "  Outre  Mer"  in  the  New  England  Magazine 
under  the  title  of  "  The  Schoolmaster  ;  "  the  first  two  sketches 
of  "  Outre  Mer"  are  published  anonymously  in  pamphlet 
form  in  Boston  in  1833;  Longfellow's  first  published  book, 
however,  was  a  translation  from  the  Spanish  of  Don  Jorge 
Manrique,  Lope  de  Vega,  and  others;  in  December,  1834,  he 
is  appointed  to  succeed  George  Ticknor  as  Smith  Professor  of 
modern  languages  at  Harvard,  with  the  privilege  of  a  year  and 
a  half  in  Europe  at  his  own  expense  before  taking  the  chair. 

He  sails  for  Europe  with  his  wife  in  April,  1835,  first  ar- 
ranging for  the  publication  of"  Outre  Mer"  in  two  volumes  ; 
in  London  he  meets  the  Carlyles  ;  thence,  in  the  summer,  by 
way  of  Hamburg  to  Copenhagen  and  Stockholm,  where  he 
studies  Swedish,  Finnish,  and  Danish  ;  he  is  detained  at  Am- 
sterdam on  his  way  to  Germany  by  his  wife's  illness,  arid 
devotes  a  month  to  the  study  of  Dutch  ;  his  wife  dies  at  Rot- 
terdam, November  29,  1835  ;  Longfellow  pushes  on  to 
Heidelberg,  where  he  settles  down  to  the  study  of  German, 
and  where  he  first  meets  Bryant,  then  residing  in  Heidelberg 
with  his  family;  in  June,  1836,  Longfellow  goes  to  Switzer- 
land by  way  of  Munich,  Milan,  and  the  Simplon  ;  he  spends 
two  months  travelling  about  Switzerland,  leaves  Heidelberg 
for  Paris  late  in  August,  1836,  and  sails  for  America  early  in 
October  ;  in  December,  1836,  he  takes  up  his  work  as  a  pro- 
fessor at  Harvard,  and  soon  enters  upon  his  life-long  intimacy 
with  Charles  Sumner,  who  was  then  lecturing  in  the  Harvard 
Law  School ;  in  March,  1837,  he  begins  his  long  correspond- 
ence with  Hawthorne,  and  soon  afterward  really  introduces 
Hawthorne  to  the  literary  world  by  writing  for  the  North 
American  Review  a  favorable  criticism  on  "Twice  Told 
Tales;"  in  May,  1837,  he  takes  lodgings  in  Craigie  House 


LONGFELLOW  621 

(once  Washington's  head -quarters),  where  he  resides  during 
the  rest  of  his  life;  here,  from  1837  to  1845,  Longfellow 
writes  many  poems,  and  submits  them  to  his  intimate  friends, 
Felton,  Sumner,  and  Hillard;  the  "Psalm  of  Life"  was 
written  here  July  26,  1838,  and  appeared  in  the  Knicker- 
bocker Magazine  in  the  following  October,  attracting  much 
attention. 

In  August,  1838,  Longfellow  described  his  daily  routine  as 
follows  :  "I  smoke  a  good  deal,  wear  a  broad -brimmed 
black  hat,  molest  no  one,  and  dine  out  frequently.  In  win- 
ter I  go  much  into  Boston  society;"  he  begins  writing 
"  Hyperion  "  November  27,  1838,  and  writes  "  The  Reaper 
and  the  Flowers"  on  the  6th  of  the  following  December, 
"  with  peace  in  my  heart  and  not  a  few  tears  in  my  eyes  ;  "  he 
publishes  "  Hyperion  "in  two  volumes  in  the  summer  of  1829, 
and  his  first  volume  of  poems,  "  Voices  of  the  Night,"  late 
in-  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  ;  he  receives  $375  in  notes  for 
the  manuscript  of ' '  Hyperion  ;  "  the  heroine  of ' '  Hyperion  ' ' 
is  a  true  portraiture  of  the  lady  who  afterward  became  Mrs. 
Longfellow  ;  in  March,  1839,  the  poet  writes :  "  I  have  three 
lectures  a  week  and  recitations  without  number.  I  go  into  my 
recitation-room  between  seven  and  eight  and  come  out  be- 
tween three  and  four,  with  one  hour's  intermission;"  he 
writes  "The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus"  October  30,  1839; 
during  this  period  of  his  life  he  is  in  very  close  touch  with 
Sumner,  Hillard,  Felton,  Hawthorne,  and  Prescott,  dining 
with  them  very  often,  and  often  entertaining  them  at  his 
rooms  in  Craigie  House  ;  in  January,  1831,  Longfellow  gives 
three  lectures  on  Dante  before  the  Mercantile  Library  Associ- 
ation of  New  York  ;  "  Voices  of  the  Night  "  passes  through 
six  editions  during  its  first  two  years  ;  "  The  Skeleton  in 
Armor  "  appears  in  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine  in  January, 
1841  ;  by  the  summer  of  1841  Longfellow  has  become  so 
famous  that,  while  on  a  visit  to  Philadelphia  with  Sumner,  he 
is  "lionized"  till  he  finds  it  a  bore;  in  October,  1841,  he 


622  LONGFELLOW 

writes  "Excelsior"  and  "God's  Acre,"  and  begins  "The 
Children  of  the  Lord's  Supper;"  in  the  following  month 
he  writes  "  Blind  Bartimeus  ;  "  about  this  time  he  begins  also 
his  "Golden  Legend,"  of  which  the  first  part  was  not  published 
till  1851  and  the  whole  (the  trilogy  called  "Christus")  not 
till  1873  ;  in  December,  1841,  he  publishes  his  second 
volume  of  verse  under  the  title  "  Ballads  and  Other  Poems." 
In  the  spring  of  1842,  being  in  poor  health,  Longfellow 
obtains  a  leave  of  absence  for  six  months,  and  sails  for  Ger- 
many, with  the  intention  of  seeking  health  at  a  water-cure 
near  Boppard  ;  here  he  meets  the  young  German  poet  Freili- 
grath,  with  whom  Longfellow  forms  a  close  friendship,  which 
lasts  through  life  ;  he  also  makes  brief  visits  to  Paris,  Antwerp, 
and  Bruges,  and  while  at  Bruges  gains  inspiration  for  the 
"  Belfry  "  poems,  published  a  year  or  two  later  ;  he  returns  to 
America  by  way  of  Heidelberg,  Nuremberg,  Cologne,  Ostend, 
and  London,  where  he  is  royally  welcomed  by  Dickens,  and 
becomes  the  novelist's  guest  at  Broadstairs,  in  Kent  ;  Long- 
fellow reaches  Cambridge  in  November,  1842,  much  improved 
in  health,  and  soon  after  his  return  publishes  a  small  pam- 
phlet of  poems  on  slavery,  most  of  which  were  written  during 
the  homeward  voyage  ;  the  "  Ballads  "  reaches  a  fifth  edition 
by  the  summer  of  1843  ;  in  July,  1843,  Longfellow  marries 
Miss  Frances  E.  Appleton,  daughter  of  a  prominent  Boston 
merchant,  a  lady  whom  he  had  met  in  Switzerland  six  years 
before  and  had  immortalized  in  "  Hyperion  ;  "  while  on  his 
wedding  journey  to  "the  old-fashioned  country  seat  "  near 
Pittsfield,  Mass.,  Longfellow  sees  "the  old  clock  on  the 
stairs  ;  "  they  return  in  the  autumn  to  Craigie  House,  which 
Mrs.  Longfellow's  father  buys  for  them,  together  with  a  plot  of 
land  across  the  street,  to  give  them  an  uninterrupted  view  of 
the  Charles  River  ;  during  this  autumn  he  edits  two  large  vol- 
umes on  the  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Europe,  but  in  doing  this  work 
so  strains  his  eyes  that  for  many  years  he  is  unable  to  use  them 
except  in  the  daytime  and  then  for  but  short  intervals  ;  he  also 


LONGFELLOW  623 

begins  to  translate  Dante  about  this  time  ;  in  a  letter  to  Whit- 
tier  in  1844  he  declines  a  nomination  to  Congress,  saying  : 
"  I  rejoice  in  freedom  from  slavery  of  all  kinds,  but  I  cannot 
for  a  moment  think  of  entering  the  political  arena  ;  "  during 
1845  he  writes  several  short  poems,  including  "The  Old 
Clock  on  the  Stairs,"  "  To  a  Child,"  "  The  Bridge,"  "  Birds 
of  Passage,"  and  "The  Arrow  and  the  Song,"  and  begins 
"  Evangeline,"  which  he  at  first  calls  "  Gabrielle  ;  "  late  in 
1845  ne  publishes  an  illustrated  volume  containing  the  short 
poems  just  named,  with  others  already  published,  and  wins 
high  praise  from  Bryant;  in  February,  1846,  he  publishes  a 
cheap  two-volume  edition  of  his  poems,  and  revises  « '  Outre 
Mer  ;  "  he  writes  "  The  Builders  "  during  the  following  May  ; 
by  July,  1846,  12,000  copies  of  "  Voices  of  the  Night  "  had 
been  sold;  Longfellow  writes  "Pegasus  in  Pound"  in  De- 
cember, 1846,  and  uses  it  as  a  prologue  to  "  The  Estray," 
published  during  the  same  month  ;  he  finishes  "  Evangeline  " 
February  27,  1847,  and  at  once  begins  his  prose  romance 
"  Kavanagh ;"  he  revises  "Evangeline"  at  Oak  Grove, 
near  Portland,  during  the  summer  vacation,  and  publishes  it 
October  30,  1847  ;  there  is  much  hostile  criticism  of  the  hex- 
ameter; the  story  on  which  "  Evangeline  "  is  based  had  first 
been  suggested  to  Hawthorne  by  a  Boston  clergyman,  but 
Hawthorne  declined  it  for  a  romance  and  gave  it  to  Longfel- 
low; much  of  "  Evangeline  "  was  first  written  with  a  pencil  in 
the  dark,  to  save  the  author's  eyes,  and  was  afterward  copied 
out ;  6,000  copies  were  sold  within  six  months  of  publica- 
tion ;  Longfellow  is  much  depressed  by  the  death  of  his  little 
daughter,  Fannie,  August  n,  1848  ;  he  finishes  "  Kavanagh  " 
November  9,  1848,  and  publishes  it  May  13,  1849;  he  be- 
gins "  The  Building  of  the  Ship  "  June  18,  1849,  and  pub- 
lishes it  in  a  collection  of  his  poems  called  "  Seaside  and 
Fireside"  in  the  following  November,  receiving  $1,000  for 
the  first  edition  ;  this  volume  contained  "  Resignation  "  and 
"  The  Fire  of  Driftwood." 


624  LONGFELLOW 

In  1850  Longfellow  again  takes  up  "  Christus,"  saying  in  his 
journal :  "  Now  I  long  to  try  a  loftier  strain  in  sublimer  song, 
whose  broken  melodies  have  for  so  many  years  breathed  through 
my  soul  in  the  better  hours  of  life  ;  "  he  writes  several  cantos 
of  "The  Golden  Legend"  during  the  winter  of  1850,  and 
hears  Fanny  Kemble  read  "The  Building  of  the  Ship  "  be- 
fore 3,000  Bostonians ;  in  the  spring  of  1850,  with  his 
family,  he  visits  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Washington, 
meeting  Bryant,  Webster,  and  Henry  Clay ;  he  spends  the 
summer  of  1850  at  Nahant,  where  he  lives  every  summer  there- 
after for  many  years,  and  meets  there  Whittier  and  the  Carey 
sisters  ;  he  finishes  "  The  Golden  Legend  "  in  March,  1851, 
and  it  is  published  in  the  following  December,  and  sells  at 
first  at  the  rate  of  two  hundred  copies  a  day;  during  1852 
he  entertains  many  eminent  people,  including  Jenny  Lind 
and  Kossuth ;  he  begins  his  translation  of  Dante's  "  Purga- 
torio  "  in  February,  1853,  and  gives  in  the  following  June  a 
farewell  dinner  to  Hawthorne,  then  just  starting  to  take  his 
consulship  at  Liverpool;  he  calls  1853  "  the  most  unproduc- 
tive year  of  my  life  ;  "  late  in  March,  1854,  on  the  occasion 
of  the  birth  of  his  daughter  simultaneously  with  the  death  of 
Lowell's  wife,  Longfellow  writes  "The  Two  Angels;"  on 
April  19,  1854,  he  delivers  at  Harvard  what  he  calls  "my 
last  lecture — the  last  I  shall  ever  deliver  anywhere;"  in 
May,  1854,  he  writes  "Prometheus  and  Epimetheus  "  and 
"  The  Rope-walk ;  "  he  begins  "  Hiawatha  "  in  June  of  this 
year,  and  works  at  it  during  his  annual  summer  residence  at 
Nahant ;  his  resignation  of  the  professorship  of  modern  lan- 
guages at  Harvard,  which  he  had  talked  of  making  for  years, 
is  accepted  September  n,  1854,  and  thus  ends  his  life 
of  eighteen  years  as  a  teacher ;  like  Lowell,  he  had  felt 
"  the  yoke"  for  years,  and  had  worried  because  his  teach- 
ing, his  social  and  family  duties,  and  his  correspondence 
left  him  so  little  time  for  writing;  late  in  January,  1855, 
Lowell  is  elected  his  successor  at  Harvard ;  Longfellow  fin- 


LONGFELLOW  625 

>hes  "Hiawatha"  March  21,  1855,  and  writes  "  My  Lost 
Youth  "  nine  days  later  ;  "  Hiawatha  "  is  published  Novem- 
ber 10,  1855,  and  the  first  edition  of  5,000  copies  is  sold  in 
advance  (Longfellow  kept  the  copyright  of  his  books  in  his 
own  hands)  ;  over  11,000  copies  of  "  Hiawatha  "  were  sold  in 
England  during  the  first  month  ;  in  the  autumn  and  winter  of 
1855-56  Longfellow  entertains  Ole  Bull,  Thackeray,  and  T. 
B.  Reed  ;  be  begins  "The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  "  De- 
cember 2,  1856  ;  by  March  31,  1857,  the  sales  of  his  books 
in  America  had  reached  the  following  aggregates:  "Voices 
of  the  Night,"  43,550  copies;  "Ballads,"  etc.,  40,470; 
"The  Spanish  Student,"  38,400;  "The  Belfry  of  Bruges," 
38,300;  "  Evangeline,"  38,550;  "Hiawatha,"  50,000; 
"  Outre  Mer,"  7,500;  "  Hyperion,"  14,550;  "  Kavanagh," 
10,500. 

In  December,  1857,  Longfellow  unites  with  Lowell,  Mot- 
ley, Emerson,  Holmes,  Cabot,  and  Underwood  in  establish- 
ing the  Atlantic  Monthly  ;  he  finishes  "  Sandalphon  "  January 
18,  1858,  and  publishes  it  sqon  afterward  ;  "  The  Courtship 
of  Miles  Standish  "  is  finished  March  22,  1858,  and  is  pub- 
lished in  the  following  October,  reaching  a  sale  of  25,000 
copies  during  its  first  week,  while  10,000  copies  are  sold  in 
London  the  first  day  after  its  appearance  ;  in  the  summer  ot 
1859  Longfellow  receives  the  degree  of  LL.D.  from  Harvard  ; 
on  April  6,  1860,  he  visits  the  spire  of  the  Old  North  Church 
in  Boston,  and  on  the  iQth  he  writes  "  Paul  Revere's  Ride;  " 
during  the  following  October  he  assists  in  entertaining  the 
Prince  of  Wales  ;  in  November  he  sits  for  Darley's  famous 
picture,  "  Washington  Irving  and  his  Friends,"  and  writes 
"The  Saga  of  King  Olaf  ;  "  on  July  9,  1861,  Mrs.  Longfel- 
low's dress  catches  fire,  and  she  dies  the  next  day  from  the 
burns  and  the  shock  ;  Longfellow  is  so  affected  that,  during 
the  remaining  twenty-one  years  of  his  life,  he  can  never  write 
or  speak  of  his  loss  ;  but  after  his  death  his  beautiful  sonnet  on 


40 


626  LONGFELLOW 

1879,  is  found  among  his  papers;  Longfellow  himself  was 
severely  burned  while  trying  to  save  his  wife  ;  late  in  1861  he 
seeks  relief  from  his  sorrow  by  taking  up  his  translation  of 
Dante,  begun  and  laid  aside  years  before ;  for  a  time  he  trans- 
lates a  canto  a  day;  in  June,  1862,  with  a  party  of  friends, 
he  visits  Niagara,  s'topping  two  days  at  Trenton  Falls  ;  from 
Niagara  the  party  go  to  Montreal  by  way  of  the  Thousand 
Islands  and  the  Rapids,  and  thence  home  by  way  of  Burling- 
ton;  in  October,  1862,  with  Fields,  he  visits  the  old  Red 
Horse  Tavern  in  Sudbury,  Mass.,  and  begins  the  "  Tales  of  a 
Wayside  Inn  ;  "  he  finishes  the  first  draft  of  his  Dante  transla- 
tion April  1 6,  1863,  having  written  "  a  canto  a  day  for  thirty- 
four  days  in  succession,"  and  begins  making  notes  for  the 
same;  the  "Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn"  (first  called  "  The 
Sudbury  Tales")  is  published  November  25,  1863  (in  the 
"  Tales"  the  poet  is  T.  W.  Parsons;  the  Sicilian,  Luigi 
Monti  ;  the  theologian,  Professor  Treadwell ;  and  the  student, 
Henry  Ware  Wales.  Of  these,  the  first  three  used  to  spend 
their  summers  at  the  Inn)  ;  earjly  in  1864  Longfellow  revises 
"  Hyperion  "  for  a  new  edition,  and  writes  several  of  his 
"  Birds  of  Passage;  "  on  May  23d  he  attends  the  funeral  of 
Hawthorne,  and  soon  afterward  writes  his  poem  on  Haw- 
thorne;  the  first  volume  of  the  Dante  translation  appears  in 
February,  1865,  and  a  special  copy  is  forwarded  to  the  Italian 
Minister  in  time  for  the  sexcentennial  anniversary  ceremonies 
in  honor  of  the  Italian  poet ;  all  three  volumes  of  the  Dante 
translation  are  very  carefully  scrutinized  by  Lowell  and  Charles 
Eliot  Norton,  both  meeting  Longfellow  one  evening  a  week, 
as  "The  Dante  Club,"  and  going  very  carefully  over  every 
word  and  construction  ;  in  November,  1865,  Longfellow 
gives  a  dinner  to  Mr.  Burlingame,  our  Minister  to  China,  in 
honor  of  the  reception  of  a  Chinese  fan,  on  which  some  "  ce- 
lestial "  poet  had  written  "The  Psalm  of  Life  "  in  Chinese 
characters;  Longfellow  completes  the  "long  labor"  of  the 
notes  to  Dante  and  the  revision  January  i,  1867  ;  his  sixtieth 


LONGFELLOW 

birthday,  February  27,  1867,  is  celebrated  with  a  poetical 
tribute  from  Lowell ;  early  in  the  following  May  Longfellow 
sails  on  his  fourth  and  last  visit  to  Europe,  in  company  with 
his  second  son,  his  son's  bride,  Longfellow's  three  young 
daughters,  his  two  sisters,  a  brother,  and  Mr.  ''Tom  "  Apple- 
ton  ;  the  party  visit  the  Lake  district  and  go  thence  to  Cam- 
bridge, where  Longfellow  receives  the  degree  of  LL.D. ;  thence 
to  London,  where  the  poet  is  overwhelmed  with  public  and 
private  honors  by  many  eminent  people,  including  Gladstone, 
Dean  Stanley,  and  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  Queen  Victoria, 
on  both  of  whom  he  calls  by  special  invitation;  Longfellow 
also  revisits  Dickens  at  Gad's  Hill,  and  spends  two  days  with 
Tennyson  on  the  Isle  of  Wight ;  the  party  go  thence  to  the 
Continent  and  up  the  Rhine  to  Switzerland,  where  they  spend 
the  summer ;  they  spend  the  autumn  in  Paris  and  the  winter 
in  Rome  and  Naples ;  returning  in  the  spring  of  1869  by  way 
of  Munich  and  Nuremberg,  they  stop  briefly  in  England  and 
Scotland,  and  at  Oxford  Longfellow  receives  the  degree  of 
D.C.L.  ;  he  returns  to  Cambridge  September  i,  1869. 

The  death  of  Hawthorne,  Felton,  and  Sumner,  and  the  ab- 
sence of  Aggassiz  and  Lowell  sadden  the  poet's  latest  years, 
though  he  still  keeps  up  his  companionship  with  Norton, 
Holmes,  and  Emerson,  and  entertains  many  noted  Europeans  at 
Craigie  House ;  in  January,  1870,  he  begins  the  second  series 
of  "  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  and  in  the  following  May  he 
prepares  a  supplement  to  his  "  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Europe," 
adding  several  new  translations  of  his  own  ;  in  November, 
1870,  he  takes  up  his  long  contemplated  "  divine  tragedy  " 
of  "  Christus,"  which  is  published  in  December,  1871  ;  late 
in  1871  he  writes  "Judas  Maccabeus"  on  a  theme  contem- 
plated for  twenty  years  but  treated  in  twelve  days ;  early  in 
1872  he  writes  "  Michael  Angelo  "  in  sixteen  days,  but  this 
poem  is  not  published  till  after  his  death  ;  in  the  spring  of 
1872  he  publishes  "  Three  Books  of  Song,"  being  the  second 
part  of  "  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  "  Judas  Maccabeus,"  and 


628  LONGFELLOW 

"A  Handful  of  Translations;  "  in  the  autumn  of  1872  the 
"  Christus  "  appears,  making,  with  the  notes,  interludes,  etc., 
a  large  volume ;  after  its  appearance  "  The  Golden  Legend  " 
is  withdrawn  as  a  separate  work ;  on  his  sixty-sixth  birthday, 
February  27,  1873,  Longfellow  publishes  the  third  "  day  "  of 
the  (l  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  and  soon  afterward  repub- 
lishes  it  in  a  small  volume  with  several  lyrics,  under  the  title 
"  Aftermath  ;  "  he  completes  "  The  Hanging  of  the  Crane  " 
January  4,  1874,  and  Robert  Bonner  pays  him  $3,000  for  the 
use  of  the  poem  in  the  New  York  Ledger;  in  1875  "The 
Hanging  of  the  Crane  "  is  published  in  a  volume  with  several 
other  poems,  under  the  title  "  Pandora's  Box;  "  this  volume 
contained,  also,  "  Morituri  Salutamus"  written  at  the  re- 
quest of  the  poet's  class  of  1825  and  delivered  at  the  Bowdoin 
Commencement  of  1875  ;  in  August,  1877,  he  receives  from 
the  Harpers  $1,000  for  "Keramos,"  which  is  published  in 
1878,  with  Longfellow's  tributes  to  Lowell,  Tennyson,  Whit- 
tier,  and  others,  in  a  volume  called  "Keramos;  "  he  con- 
tinues to  pass  his  summers  at  Nahant,  with  always  a  week  at 
his  boyhood  home  in  Portland  ;  in  1879,  on  his  seventy-sec- 
ond birthday,  he  is  presented  by  the  school-children  of  Cam- 
bridge with  a  chair  made  from  the  wood  of  the  * '  spreading 
chestnut-tree  "  under  which  "the  village  smithy  "  formerly 
stood  ;  late  in  the  same  year  he  writes  his  poem  on  Burns, 
which  appears  in  1880  with  seventeen  other  short  poems  in 
a  thin  volume  called  "  Ultima  Thule ;"  in  1880  the  poet's 
birthday  is  widely  celebrated  by  the  school-children  through- 
out the  country  ;  he  writes  his  sonnet  "  My  Books,"  Decem- 
ber 26,  1882,  and  in  the  following  January  the  poem  "  Mad 
River"  and  the  sonnet  "  Possibilities;  "  on  March  15,  1882, 
he  writes  his  last  lines,  being  the  closing  stanza  of  "  The 
Bells  of  San  Bias;  "  he  dies  at  his  Cambridge  home,  March 
24,  1882. 


LONGFELLOW 


629 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  CRITICISM    ON    LONGFELLOW. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "American  Literature."    Boston,  1887,  72,  37. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."  Boston,  1873,  Osgood,  I:  58-68. 
Kennedy,  W.  S.,"  H.W.  Longfellow."   Cambridge,  1882,  King,  v.  index. 
Stedman,  E.  C.,  "  Poets  of  America. "  Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  80-225. 

Taylor,  B.,  "Essays  and  Notes."  New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  296-298. 
Gilfillan,  G.,  "  Literary  Portraits. "  Edinburgh,  1852,  Hogg,  2:  254-256. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  "Works."     New  York,  1855,  3:   292-374. 
Henley,  W.  E.,  "Views  and  Reviews."    New  York,  1890,  Scribner. 
Lang,  A.,  "Letters  on  Literature."    New  York,  1892,  37~47- 
Underwood,  F.  H.,    "  H.  W.  Longfellow."     Boston,  1882,   Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  v.  index. 
Fiske,  J.,  "The  Unseen  World."     Boston,  1876,   Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  237-265. 
Longfellow,    S.,    "  Final   Memorials  of  H.  W.  Longfellow."     Boston, 

1876,  Ticknor,  v.  index. 
Longfellow,    S.,    "Life,   Letters,   and  Journal  of  H.  W.  Longfellow." 

Boston,  1886,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  2  volumes,  v.  index. 
Robertson,  E.  H.,  "  Life  of  H.  W.  Longfellow"  (Great  Writers  Series). 

London,  1887,  W.  Scott,  v.  index. 


"Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,  1878,  Moxon, 
Character    Studies."     New  York,    1894,    Whittaker, 


Rossetti,   W.  M. 

383-39L 
Saunders,    F.,    ' 

113-130. 
Scudder,  H.  E.,  "Men  and  Letters,"  Boston,  1889,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  23-70. 
Mitford,  M.  R.,  "  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life. "     New  York,  1851, 

Harper,  61-71. 

Parton,  J.,  "Some  Noted  Princes."    New  York,  1885,  Crowell,  289-296 
Stoddard,  R.  H.,  "Poets'  Homes."    Boston,  1871,  Lothrop,  1-18. 
Devey,  J.,  "Modern  English  Poets."    London,  1873,  Moxon,  360-368. 
Haweis,  H.  R.,  "Poets  in  the  Pulpit."    London,  1883,  Sampson,  Low 

&  Co.,  1-32. 
Matthews,  Brander,  "Introduction  to  American  Literature."  New  York, 

1896,  American  Book  Company,  124-137. 
Whitman,  W.,  "Essays  from  the  Critic."     Boston,  1892. 
Whittier,  J.  G.,    "Prose  Works."     Boston,  1889,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  3:   365-374. 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  "  Poetical  Works. "     Boston,  1890,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 
Co.,  142. 


630  LONGFELLOW 

Griswold,  R.  W.,  "Poets  and  Poetry  of  America."    Philadelphia,  1846, 

Carey  &  Hart,  297-301. 

Taylor,  B.,  "Essays  and  Notes."  New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  296-298. 
Devey,  J.,  "  A  Comparative  Estimate. "  London,  1873,  Moxon,  360-367. 
North  American  Review,  132:  383-406  (A.  Trollope) ;  105:  124-148 

(C.    E.    Norton);    69:     196-215   (Lowell);     82:     272-275    (E.   E. 

Hale);    104:    531-540  (W.  D.  Howells);    66:   215,  and  55:    114, 

and  50:    145  (C.  C.  Felton). 

Scribner's  Monthly,  17:    1-19  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Harper's  Magazine,  65  :    123-128  (G.  W.  Curtis);  93:   327-343  (W.  D. 

Howells). 

Century,  4:   926-941  (E.  C.  Stedman). 

Good  Words,  23:  385-387  (Bret  Harte);  28:  154-159  (F.  H.  Underwood). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  49:  721,  722  (O.  W.  Holmes);  59:  398-409  (H.  E. 

Scudder). 
Nation,  34:   266,  267  (T.  W.  Higginson) ;   42:  300-307  (G.  E.  Wood- 

berry). 

Arena,  15:    183-186  (M.  J.  Savage). 
Chautauquan,  22  :  412-416  (A.  S.  Cook). 
Lippincotfs  Magazine,  57:   95-104  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Me  C  hirers  Magazine,  7:    114-121  (E.  S.  Phelps). 
Critic,  2:   101  (W.  Whitman);  3:  333  (W.  S.  Kennedy). 
Athenceum,  '82,  1  :  411  (A.  Dobson). 


PARTICULAR    CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Artistic  Fidelity— Finish. 

"  Had  Theocritus  written  in  English,  not  Greek, 

I  believe  that  his  exquisite  sense  would  scarce  change  a  line 
Of  that  rare,  tender,  virgin-like  pastoral  Evangeline. 
That's  not  ancient  nor  modern,  its  place  is  apart 
Where  time  has  no  sway,  in  the  realm  of  pure  Art; 
'Tis  a  shrine  of  retreat  from  earth's  hubbub  and  strife, 
As  quiet  and  chaste  as  the  author's  own  life." — Lowell. 

"Longfellow's  artistic  ability  is  admirable,  because  it  is  not 
seen.  It  is  rather  mental  than  mechanical.  .  .  .  The 
best  artist  is  he  who  accommodates  his  diction  to  his  subject ; 
and  in  this  sense  Longfellow  is  an  artist.  He  selects  with 


LONGFELLOW  631 

great  delicacy  and  precision  the  exact  phrase  which  best  sug- 
gests his  idea." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"Longfellow  is  a  craftsman  of  unerring  taste.  He  lived 
for  poetry.  .  .  .  The  nicest  skill  was  required  to  protect 
the  verse  [that  of  "  Hiawatha  "]  from  gathering  an  effect  of 
burlesque  or  of  commonplace  ;  yet  this  it  never  does. 
He  was  a  lyrical  artist  whose  taste  outranked  his  inspiration. 
.  .  .  He  always  gave  of  his  best;  neither  toil  nor  trouble 
could  dismay  him  until  art  had  done  its  perfect  work.  It  was 
a  kind  of  genius — his  sure  perception  of  the  fit  and  attractive." 
— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  In  the  '  Skeleton  in  Armor'  we  find  a  pure  and  perfect  the- 
sis, artistically  treated.  We  find  the  beauty  of  bold  courage 
and  self-confidence,  of  love  and  maiden  devotion,  of  reckless 
adventure,  and  finally,  of  life-continuing  grief.  Combined 
with  all  this  we  have  numerous  points  of  beauty,  apparently 
insulated,  but  all  aiding  the  main  effect  or  impression.  The 
heart  is  stirred,  and  the  mind  does  not  lament  its  mal- 
instruction.  The  meter  is  simple,  sonorous,  well-balanced, 
and  fully  adapted  to  the  subject.  On  the  whole,  there  are 
few  truer  poems  than  this." — Edgar  A.  Poe. 

"  Longfellow,  though  not  a  very  great  magician  and  master 
of  language — not  a  Keats  by  any  means — has  often,  by  sheer 
force  of  plain  sincerity,  struck  exactly  the  right  note,  and 
matched  his  thought  with  music  that  haunts  us  and  will  not 
be  forgotten." — Andrew  Lang. 

"  This  fine  sense  of  form,  this  intuitive  perception  of  fit- 
ness, was  an  inestimable  endowment  of  the  artist,  and  is  one 
of  his  passports  to  immortality.  ...  In  all  that  calls  for 
delicate  taste,  a  fine  sense  of  fitness,  and  a  skilful  use  of  mate- 
rial already  formed,  this  trilogy  ["  Christus  "]  has  the  poet's 
distinctive  mark." — H.  E.  Scudder. 

"  An  exquisite  literary  artist,  a  very  Benvenuto  of  grace 
and  skill.  .  .  .  A  literary  artist  of  consummate  elegance." 
— George  William  Curtis. 


632  LONGFELLOW 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Maiden  !  with  the  meek,  brown  eyes, 
In  whose  orbs  a  shadow  lies 
Like  the  dusk  in  evening  skies  ! 

"  Thou  whose  locks  outshine  the  sun, 
Golden  tresses,  wreathed  in  one, 
As  the  braided  streamlets  run  ! 

"  Standing,  with  reluctant  feet, 
Where  the  brook  and  river  meet, 
Womanhood  and  childhood  fleet !  " 

— Ma  idcn  hood. 

"  The  sun  is  bright,  the  air  is  clear, 

The  darting  swallows  soar  and  sing, 
And  from  the  stately  elms  I  hear 
The  bluebird  prophesying  spring. 

"  All  things  rejoice  in  youth  and  love, 
The  fulness  of  their  first  delight ! 
And  learn  from  the  soft  heavens  above 
The  melting  tenderness  of  night." 

— //  Is  Not  Always  May. 
"  She  lies  asleep, 

And  from  her  parted  lips  her  gentle  breath 
Comes  like  the  fragrance  from  the  lips  of  flowers  ; 
Her  tender  limbs  are  still,  and  on  her  breast 
The  cross  she  prayed  to,  ere  she  fell  asleep, 
Rises  and  falls  with  the  soft  tide  of  dreams, 
Like  a  light  barge  safe  moored." — The  Spanish  Student. 

2.  Perception  of  Beauty. — "  They  are  wrong  who  make 
light  of  Longfellow's  service  as  an  American  poet.  His  ad- 
mirers may  be  no  longer  a  critical  majority,  yet  surely  he 
helped  to  quicken  the  New  World  sense  of  beauty.  .  .  . 
Our  true  rise  of  poetry  may  be  dated  from  Longfellow's  method 
of  exciting  an  interest  in  it  as  an  expression  of  beauty  and 
feeling.  .  .  .  Puritanism  was  opposed  to  beauty  as  a 


LONGFELLOW  633 

strange  god  and  to  sentiment  as  an  idle  thing.  Longfellow 
so  adapted  the  beauty  and  sentiment  of  other  lands  to  the 
convictions  of  his  people  as  to  beguile  their  reason  through 
their  finer  senses  and  speedily  to  satisfy  them  that  loveliness 
and  righteousness  may  go  together." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Were  it  not  that  young  misses  have  made  the  phrase  of 
equivocal  meaning,  we  would  call  him  '  a  beautiful  poet.'  He 
has  a  feeling  exquisitely  fine  for  what  is  generally  understood 
by  the  term  of  beauty — that  is,  for  actual  earthly  beauty, 
idealized  and  refined  by  the  imagination.  .  .  .  His  sense 
of  beauty,  though  uncommonly  vivid,  is  not  the  highest  of 
which  the  mind  is  capable.  He  has  little  conception  of  its 
mysterious  spirit.  .  .  .  His  mind  never  appears  oppressed, 
nor  his  sight  dimmed  by  its  exceeding  glory.  He  feels  and 
loves  and  creates  what  is  beautiful ;  but  he  hymns  no  reverence, 
he  pays  no  adoration  to  the  Spirit  of  Beauty." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  His  powers  were  rare,  his  studies  were  helpful,  his  sense 
of  proportion  and  of  melody  exquisite,  his  perception  of  beauty 
keen." — F.  H.  Underwood. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  rising  moon  has  hid  the  stars  ; 
Her  level  rays,  like  golden  bars, 
Lie  on  the  landscape  green, 
With  shadows  brown  between. 

"  And  silver-white  the  river  gleams, 
As  if  Diana,  in  her  dreams, 
Had  dropt  her  silver  bow 
Upon  the  meadows  low." — Endymion. 

"  Beautiful  was  the  night.     Behind  the  black  wall  of  the  forest, 
Tipping  its  summit  with  silver,  arose  the  moon.     On  the  river 
Fell  here  and  there  through  the  branches  a  tremulous  gleam 

of  the  moonlight, 
Like  the  sweet  thoughts  of  love  on  a  darkened  and  devious 

spirit. " — Evangeline, 


634  LONGFELLOW 

"  There  is  a  quiet  spirit  in  these  woods, 

That  dwells  where'er  the  gentle  south-wind  blows  ; 
Where,  underneath  the  white-thorn,  in  the  glade, 
The  wild  flowers  bloom,  or,  kissing  the  soft  air, 
The  leaves  above  their  sunny  palms  outspread. 
With  what  a  tender  and  impassioned  voice 
It  fills  the  nice  and  delicate  ear  of  thought, 
When  the  fast  ushering  star  of  morning  comes 
O'er-riding  the  gray  hills  with  golden  scarf; 
Or  when  the  cowled  and  dusky-sandaled  Eve, 
In  mourning  weeds,  from  out  the  western  gate, 
Departs  with  silent  pace  !     That  spirit  moves 
In  the  green  valley,  where  the  silver  brook, 
From  its  full  laver,  pours  the  white  cascade  ; 
And  babbling  low  amid  the  tangled  woods, 
Slips  down  through  moss-grown  stones  with  endless  laughter." 

—  The  Spirit  of  Poetry. 

3.  Humanity— Sympathy— Tenderness —  "  Owing 
to  the  tenderness  seldom  absent  from  his  work,  Longfellow 
has  often  been  called  the  poet  of  the  affections.  .  .  .  With 
his  age  his  tenderness  grew  upon  him,  as  men's  traits  will  for 
good  or  bad." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  humanities,  to  adopt  a  phrase,  were  never  long  ab- 
sent from  Mr.  Longfellow's  thoughts.     We  feel  their  presence 
in  'The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs,'  in  'The  Bridge,' etc." 
— R.  H.  Stoddard. 
"  Does  it  make  a  man  worse  that  his  character's  such 

As  to  make  his  friends  love  him  (as  you  think)  too  much  ? 

Why,  there's  not  a  bard  at  this  moment  alive 

More  willing  than  he  that  his  fellows  should  thrive ; 

While  you  are  abusing  him  thus  even  now 

He  would  help  either  one  of  you  out  of  a  slough." 

— Lowell. 

"  Each  of  his  most  noted  poems  is  the  song  of  a  feeling 
common  to  every  mind  in  moods  into  which  every  mind  is 
liable  to  fall.  .  .  .  There  is  a  humanity  in  them  which 


LONGFELLOW  635 

is  irresistible  in  the  fit  measures  to  which  they  are  wedded. 
.  .  .  He  is  the  poet  of  the  household,  of  the  fireside,  of 
the  universal  home  feeling.  The  infinite  tenderness  and  pa- 
tience, the  pathos,  and  the  beauty  of  daily  life,  of  familiar 
emotion,  and  the  common  scene — these  are  the  significance  of 
that  verse  whose  beautiful  and  simple  melody,  softly  murmur- 
ing for  more  than  forty  years,  made  the  singer  the  most  be- 
loved of  living  men."  —  George  William  Curtis. 

' 'Longfellow  is  wellnigh  universal  in  his  sympathies,  and 
so  is  the  beloved  of  all  men." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

11  Longfellow  wrote  for  humanity,  and  humanity  recognized 
its  own  hopes  and  feelings  in  the  plain  aphoristic  patience  and 
cheer  of  <  The  Psalm  of  Life.'  "— C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  He  comes  as  the  poet  of  melody,  courtesy,  deference, 
poet  of  all  sympathetic  gentleness  and  universal  poet 
of  women  and  young  people." — Waif  Whitman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  O  little  feet !  that  such  long  years 

Must  wander  on  through  hopes  and  fears, 

Must  ache  and  bleed  beneath  your  load  ; 
I,  nearer  to  the  wayside  inn 
Where  toil  may  cease  and  rest  begin, 

Am  weary,  thinking  of  your  load  !  " —  Weariness. 

"  Thou  unknown  hero,  sleeping  by  the  sea 
In  thy  forgotten  grave  !  with  secret  shame 

I  feel  my  pulses  beat,  my  forehead  burn, 
When  I  remember  thou  hast  given  for  me 
All  that  thou  hadst,  thy  life,  thy  very  name, 
And  I  can  give  thee  nothing  in  return." 

— A  Nameless  Grave. 

"  '  My  Lord  has  need  of  these  flowerets  gay,' 

The  Reaper  said,  and  smiled  ; 
'  Dear  tokens  of  the  earth  are  they, 
Where  he  was  once  a  child. 


636  LONGFELLOW 

"  They  shall  all  bloom  in  fields  of  light, 

Transplanted  by  my  care, 
And  saints,  upon  their  garments  white, 
These  sacred  blossoms  wear.' 

"  And  the  mother  gave,  in  tears  and  pain, 

The  flowers  she  most  did  love  ; 
She  knew  she  would  find  them  all  again 
In  the  fields  of  light  above." 

—  The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers. 


4.  Sentiment— Grace— Mildness.  —  "  Longfellow  is 
mr  poet  of  grace  and  sentiment.  Scores  of  followers  have 
caught  a  manner  which  shows  to  advantage  when  transferred  ; 
but  his  position  for  years  at  the  head  of  even  a  sentimental 
school,  shows  that  Longfellow  was  not  without  a  genius  of  his 
own.-  .  .  .  Superlative  joy  and  woe  alike  were  foreign 
to  the  verse  of  Longfellow.  It  came  neither  from  the  heights 
nor  out  of  the  depths  but  along  the  even  tenor  of  a  fortunate 
life.  .  .  .  So  far  as  comfort,  virtue,  domestic  tenderness, 
and  freedom  from  extreme  of  passion  and  incident  are  char- 
acteristics of  the  middle  classes,  he  has  been  their  minstrel. 
.  .  .  '  The  cry  of  the  human  '  did  not  haunt  his  ear.  When 
he  avails  himself  of  a  piteous  situation  he  does  so  as  tranquilly 
as  the  nuns  who  broider  on  tapestry  the  torments  of  the 
doomed  in  hell.  .  .  .  There  is  something  exasperating  to 
serious  minds  in  his  placid  waiver  of  the  grievous  or  the  dis- 
tasteful. .  .  .  From  the  first  he  was  a  poet  of  sentiment. 
His  worldly  wisdom  was  of  the  gospel  kind,  so 
gently  tempered  as  to  do  no  evil.  .  .  .  Next  above  these 
pretty  homilies  are  his  poems  of  sentiment  and  twilight  brood- 
ings.  '  The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers,'  '  Footsteps  of  Angels,' 
etc.,  come  home  to  pensive  and  gentle  natures." — E.  C.  Stcd- 
man. 

"  The  secret  of  his  youthful  devotion  to  his  art  does  not  lie 
wholly  in  his  intellectual  range  and  richness;  it  springs  also 


LONGFELLOW  637 

from  the  universality  of  his  sentiment — we  use  the  word  in  its 
pure  and  dignified  sense — in  a  wide,  diffused  glow,  which 
does  not  rise  to  the  heat  and  blaze  of  passion,  and  is  so  much 
the  more  permanent." — Bayard  Taylor. 

"  Morality  to  Emerson  was  the  very  breath  of  existence ; 
to  Longfellow  it  was  a  sentiment." — E.  S.  Robertson. 

"  It  was  customary  to  say  that  his  poetry  was  sentimental. 
So  it  was  ;  but  the  sentiment  was  healthy,  sweet,  and  true. 
It  was  the  sentiment  which  fills  with  most  the  place 
of  reasoning,  with  some  is  the  substitute  for  faith;  a  sentiment 
tender,  humane,  devout,  trusting,  submissive,  but  manly, 
touching  all  objects  with  romantic  charm,  associating  the 
lowest  with  some  human  interest,  connecting  the  highest  with 
the  mysteriousness  of  Providence  and  the  unchanging  benig- 
nity of  God." — O.  B.  Frothingham. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

As  a  fond  mother,  when  the  day  is  o'er, 

Leads  by  the  hand  her  little  child  to  bed, 

Half  willing,  half  reluctant  to  be  led, 

And  leave  his  broken  playthings  on  the  floor, 

Still  gazing  at  them  through  the  open  door, 

Nor  wholly  reassured  and  comforted 

By  promises  of  others  in  their  stead, 

Which,  though  more  splendid,  may  not  please  him  more; 

So  Nature  deals  with  us,  and  takes  away 

Our  playthings  one  by  one,  and  by  the  hand 

Leads  us  to  rest  so  gently,  that  we  go 

Scarce  knowing  if  we  wish  to  go  or  stay, 

Being  too  full  of  sleep  to  understand 

How  far  the  unknown  transcends  the  what  we  know." 

— Nature. 
"  The  birds  sang  in  the  branches, 

With  sweet,  familiar  tone  ; 

But  the  voices  of  the  children 

Will  be  heard  in  dreams  alone. 


638  LONGFELLOW 

"  And  the  boy  that  walked  beside  me, 
He  could  not  understand 
Why  closer  in  mine,  ah  !  closer, 
I  pressed  his  warm,  soft  hand." 

—  The  Open  Window. 

"  The  shadow  of  the  linden-trees 
Lay  moving  on  the  grass  ; 
Between  them  and  the  moving  boughs, 
A  shadow,  thou  didst  pass. 

"  Thy  dress  was  like  the  lilies, 
And  thy  heart  as  pure,  as  they  ; 
One  of  God's  holy  messengers 
Did  walk  with  me  that  day. 

"  I  saw  the  branches  of  the  trees 
Bend  down  thy  touch  to  meet, 
The  clover-blossoms  in  the  grass 
Rise  up  to  kiss  thy  feet." — A  Gleam  of  Sunshine. 

5.  Revery — Repose. — "His  life  and  works  together 
were  an  edifice  fairly  built— the  '  House  Beautiful,'  whose  air 
is  peace,  where  repose  and  calm  are  ministrant,  where  the  ra- 
ven's croak,  symbol  of  the  unrest  of  a  more  perturbed  genius, 
is  never  heard.  .  .  .  Heine's  rhythm  and  revery  were 
repeated  in  <  The  Day  Is  Done,'  'The  Bridge,'  'Twilight/ 
etc.,  but  not  his  passion  and  scorn.  .  .  .  Neither  war 
nor  grief  ever  too  much  disturbed  his  artist-soul.  Tragedy 
went  no  deeper  with  him  than  its  pathos  ;  it  was  another 
element  of  the  beautiful.  Death  was  a  luminous  transition." 
— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  He  has  little  of  the  unrest  and  frenzy  of  the  bard.  .  .  . 
An  air  of  repose,  of  quiet  power,  is  around  his  composi- 
tions."—^. P.  Whipple. 

"  That  calm  sweetness  of  spirit,  which  was  so  apparent  in 
Longfellow,  was  an  acquisition  as  well  as  an  endowment." 
— Horace  E.  Scudder. 


LONGFELLOW  639 

"Mr.  Longfellow's  instrument  is  not  the  trumpet  but  the 
flute.  He  does  not  so  much  stir  as  assure  and  soothe — more 
lullaby  than  appeal.  He  croons  a  cradle-song  to  this  great 
humanity,  still  a  child,  tired  and  worn  on  its  way.  He  gives 
the  peace  it  implores." — C.  A.  Bartol. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  see  the  lights  of  the  village 

Gleam  through  the  rain  and  the  mist, 
And  a  feeling  of  sadness  comes  o'er  me 
That  my  soul  cannot  resist  ; 

"  A  feeling  of  sadness  and  longing, 
That  is  not  akin  to  pain, 
And  resembles  sorrow  only 
As  the  mist  resembles  the  rain." 

—  The  Day  Is  Done. 


"  From  the  garden  just  below 
Little  puffs  of  perfume  blow, 
And  a  sound  is  in  his  ears 
Of  the  murmur  of  the  bees 
In  the  shining  chestnut  trees  ; 
Nothing  else  he  heeds  or  hears. 
All  the  landscape  seems  to  swoon 
In  the  happy  afternoon  ; 
Slowly  o'er  his  senses  creep 
The  encroaching  waves  of  sleep, 
And  he  sinks  as  sank  the  town, 
Unresisting,  fathoms  down, 
Into  caverns  cool  and  deep  !  " — Amalfi. 


"  This  is  the  place.     Stand  still,  my  steed, 
Let  me  review  the  scene, 
And  summon  from  the  shadowy  Past 
The  forms  that  once  have  been. 


640  LONGFELLOW 

"  The  Past  and  Present  here  unite 
Beneath  Time's  flowing  tide, 
Like  footprints  hidden  by  a  brook 
But  seen  on  either  side." 

— A  Gleam  of  Sunshine. 


Bookishness— Erudition.— Of  all  our  great  Amer- 
poets,  Longfellow  has  drawn  most  from  books  and  least 
directly  from  nature. 

"  The  bookish  flavor  of  his  work  is  at  once  its  strength  and 
its  weakness.  ...  In  reading  Longfellow  we  see  that 
the  world  of  books  was  to  him  a  real  world.  From  first  to 
last,  if  he  had  been  banished  from  his  library,  his  imagination 
would  have  been  blind  and  deaf  and  silent.  It  is  true  that  he 
fed  upon  the  choicest  yield  of  literature  ;  his  gathered  honey 
was  of  the  thyme  and  clover,  not  of  the  rude  buckwheat.  .  .  . 
He  had  a  bookishness  as  assimilative  as  that  of  Hunt  or 
Lamb.  .  .  .  In  '  Evangeline  '  there  are  refined  pictures 
of  scenery  that  was  familiar  to  him  with  just  as  pleasing  de- 
scriptions of  that  which  he  knew  only  through  his  books." 
— E.  C.  Stedman. 

11  Even  when  dealing  expressly  with  American  subjects,  his 
mind  was  so  stored  with  the  abundance  of  a  matured  civiliza- 
tion that  he  was  constantly,  by  reference  and  allusion,  carry- 
ing the  reader  on  a  voyage  to  Europe." — Horace  E.  Scudder. 

"Among  the  minor  defects  of  the  play  ["The  Spanish 
Student "]  we  may  mention  the  frequent  allusion  to  book  inci- 
dents not  generally  known  and  requiring  each  a  note  by  way 
of  explanation.  The  drama  demands  that  everything  be  so 
instantaneously  evident  that  he  who  runs  may  read ;  and  the 
only  impression  effected  by  these  notes  to  a  play  is  that  the 
author  is  desirous  of  showing  his  reading." — Edgar  A.  Poe. 

11  Longfellow  has  enjoyed  every  advantage  that  culture  can 
give,  and  his  knowledge  of  many  nations  and  many  languages 
undoubtedly  has  given  breadth  to  his  mind  and  opened  to 
him  ever  new  sources  of  poetic  interest." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


LONGFELLOW  641 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  ancient  Priam  at  the  Scaean  gate 
Sat  on  the  walls  of  Troy  in  regal  state 
With  the  old  men,  too  old  and  weak  to  fight, 
Chirping  like  grasshoppers  in  their  delight 
To  see  the  embattled  hosts,  with  spear  and  shield, 
Of  Trojans  and  Achaians  in  the  field  ; 
So  from  the  snowy  summits  of  our  years 
We  see  you  in  the  plain,  as  each  appears, 
And  question  of  you  ;  asking,  '  Who  is  he 
That  towers  above  the  others  ?     Which  may  be 
Atreides,  Menelaus,  Odysseus, 
Ajax  the  great,  or  bold  Idomeneus  ?  '  " 

— Morituri  Salutamus. 

"  Some  legend  written  by  Judah  Rav 
In  his  Gemara  of  Babylon  ; 
Or  something  from  the  Gulistan — 
The  tale  of  the  Cazy  of  Hamadan, 
Or  of  that  king  of  Khorasan 
Who  saw  in  dreams  the  eyes  of  one 
That  had  a  hundred  years  been  dead." 

—  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn . 

Visions  of  the  days  departed,  shadowy  phantoms  filled  my 

brain  ; 
They  who  live  in  history  only  seemed  to  walk  the  earth  again ; 

"  All  the  Foresters  of  Flanders,— mighty  Baldwin  Bras  de  Fer, 
Lyderick  du  Bucq  and  Cressy  Philip,  Guy  de  Dampierre. 

"  I  beheld  the  pageants  splendid  that  adorned  those  days  of 

old; 
Stately  dames   like  queens  attended,  knights  who   bore  the 

Fleece  of  Gold ; 

"  Lombard  and  Venetian  merchants  with  deep-laden  argosies  ; 
Ministers  from  twenty  nations  ;  more  than  royal  pomp  and 
ease."—  The  Belfry  of  Bruges. 


642  LONGFELLOW 

7.  Imitation — Assimilation. — While  Longfellow  has 
been  generally  acquitted  of  the  moral  guilt  implied  in  Poe's 
famous  article  entitled  "  Mr.  Longfellow  and  other  Plagiar- 
ists," even  his  warmest  admirers  are  forced  to  admit  that  he 
has  repeatedly,  if  unconsciously,  assimilated  the  ideas  and 
even  the  forms  of  other  poets. 

"  It  must  be  acknowledged,  at  the  outset,  that  few  poets  of 
his  standing  have  profited  more  openly  by  examples  that 
suited  their  taste  and  purpose.  .  .  .  Like  greater  bards 
before  him,  he  was  a  good  borrower.  .  .  .  Given  a  task 
which  he  liked — with  a  pattern  supplied  by  another — and 
few  could  equal  him.  .  .  .  The  poet's  matter,  if  often 
gleaned  from  foreign  literature,  was  novel  to  his  readers,  and 
the  style  distinct  from  that  of  any  English  contemporary. 
But  if  there  was  nothing  of  the  Grecian  in  him,  there 
was  much  of  the  Latinist,  and  with  Virgil's  polished  muse  he 
might  have  been  quite  at  ease.  .  .  .  The  superb  apostro- 
phe to  the  Union  [at  the  close  of  "  The  Building  of  the 
Ship  "]  outvies  that  ode  of  Horace  on  which  it  is  modelled." 
— E.  C.  Stedman. 

/'Even  when  treating  of  distinctly  American  subjects, 
.  .  .  he  borrowed  his  expressions  from  traditions  of  English 
poetry.  .  .  .  There  are  repeated  instances  of  entirely 
second-hand  reflections  of  scenes  which  were  impossible  to  his 
eye.  .  .  .  Even  when  dealing  with  a  slight  historic  fact, 
as  in  the  '  Hymn  to  the  Moravian  Nuns  of  Bethlehem,'  he 
translated  the  entire  incident  into  terms  of  foreign  import. 
.  .  .  It  would  not  be  difficult  for  one,  running  through 
the  entire  body  of  the  poems,  to  find  in  those  relating  to  for- 
eign subjects  a  constant  indirect  reference  to  existing  literary 
materials.  Not  only  so,  but  in  such  poems  as  '  The  Court- 
ship of  Miles  Standish  '  and  '  Evangeline,'  the  scaffolding 
which  the  poet  put  up  could  easily  be  put  up  by  the  histor- 
ical student ;  in  the  '  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn  '  only  one  is 
in  any  peculiar  sense  the  poet's  invention ;  while  '  Hia- 


LONGFELLOW 

watha '   is  Schoolcraft  translated  into  poetry." — Horace  E. 
Scudder. 

il  Throughout  *  The  Spanish  Student/  as  well  as  through- 
out other  compositions  of  its  author,  there  runs  a  very  obvi- 
ous vein  of  imitation.  We  are  perpetually  reminded  of  some- 
thing we  have  seen  before — some  old  acquaintance  in  manner 
or  matter ;  and  even  where  the  similarity  cannot  be  said  to 
amount  to  plagiarism,  it  is  still  injurious  to  the  poet  in  the 
good  opinion  of  him  who  reads.  .  .  .  Much  as  we  ad- 
mire the  genius  of  Mr.  Longfellow,  we  are  fully  sensible  to 
his  many  errors  of  affectation  and  imitation." — Edgar  A. 
Foe. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  So  the  Hexameter,  rising  and  singing,  with  cadence  sonorous, 
Falls  ;  and  in  refluent  rhythm  back  the  Pentameter  flows." 

— Elegiac  Verse. 

Compare  Coleridge's 

"  In  the  hexameter  rises  the  fountain's  silvery  column  ; 
In  the  pentameter  aye  falling  in  melody  back." 

"  Look  then  into  thy  heart,  and  write  !  " 

—  Voices  of  the  Night. 

Compare  Sydney's 
"  Fool,  said  my  muse  to  me,  look  in  thy  heart  and  write." 

"  Oh,  what  a  glory  doth  this  world  put  on 
For  him  who,  with  a  fervent  heart,  goes  forth 
Under  the  bright  and  glorious  sky,  and  looks 
On  duties  well  performed  and  days  well  spent ! 
For  him  the  wind,  ay,  and  the  yellow  leaves, 
Shall  have  a  voice,  and  give  him  eloquent  teachings. 
He  shall  so  hear  the  solemn  hymn  that  death 
Has  lifted  up  for  all,  that  he  shall  go 
To  his  long  resting-place  without  a  tear." — Autumn. 


644  LONGFELLOW 

Compare  with  the  following  from  Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis," 
written  when  Longfellow  was  only  four  years  old. 

"  To  him  who  in  the  love  of  nature  holds 

Communion  with  her  visible  forms,  she  speaks 
A  various  language  ; 

"  Go  forth  under  the  open  sky,  and  list 

To  nature'/ teachings,  while  from  all  around — 
Earth  and  her  waters  and  the  depths  of  air — 
Comes  a  still  voice  : — 

./.....          ... 

"  Like/one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch  about  him 
And*lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams." 


8.  Stock  Morality — Commonplace— Didacticism. 

— "  A  cheerful  acceptance  of  the  lessons  of  life  was  the  moral, 
suggested  in  many  lyrics,  which  commended  him  to  all  virtu- 
ous, home-keeping  folk,  but  in  the  end  poorly  served  him 
with  the  critics.  He  gained  a  foothold  by  his  least  poetic 
work — verse  whose  easy  lessons  are  adjusted  to  common  needs ; 
little  sermons  in  rhyme  that  are  sure  to  catch  the  ear  and  to 
become  hackneyed  as  a  sidewalk  song.  He  often  taught,  by 
choice,  the  primary  class;  and  the  upper  form  is  slow  to  forget 
it.  .  .  .  As  a  moralist  no  one  could  make  the  common- 
place more  attractive.  .  .  .  Simple,  even  elementary  it 
[his  poetry]  manifestly  is,  despite  the  learning  which  he  puts 
to  use." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  morality  of  the  '  Psalm  of  Life  '  is  commonplace.  If 
versified  by  a  poetaster,  it  would  inspire  no  deep  feeling  and 
strengthen  no  high  purposes.  But  the  worn  axioms  of  didactic 
verse  have  the  breath  of  a  new  life  breathed  into  them  when 
they  are  touched  by  genius.  We  are  made  to  love  and  fol- 
low what  before  we  merely  assented  to  with  a  lazy  acqui- 
escence. ...  It  would  be  easy  to  say  much  of  Long- 
fellow's singular  felicity  in  addressing  the  moral  nature  of  man. 
It  has  been  said  of  him,  sometimes  in  derision,  that  all  his 


LONGFELLOW  645 

poems  have  a  moral.  There  is  doubtless  a  tendency  in  his 
mind  to  evolve  some  useful  meaning  from  his  finest  imaginations 
and  to  preach  when  he  should  only  sing  ;  but  we  still  think 
that  the  moral  of  his  compositions  is  not  thrust  intrusively 
forward,  but  rather  flows  naturally  from  the  subject. 
He  inculcates  with  much  force  that  poetic  stoicism  which 
teaches  us  to  reckon  earthly  evils  at  their  true  worth  and  to 
endure  with  patience  what  results  inevitably  from  our  con- 
dition."— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Even  in  spite  of  this  friendliness  and  affection  which 
Longfellow  wins,  I  can  see,  of  course,  that  he  does  moralize 
too  much.  The  first  part  of  his  lyrics  is  always  the  best ;  the 
part  where  he  is  dealing  with  the  subject.  Then  comes  the 
'  practical  application  '  as  preachers  say,  and  I  feel  somehow 
that  that  is  sometimes  uncalled  for,  disenchanting,  and  even 
manufactured." — Andrew  Lang. 

"  His  didactics  are  all  out  of  place.  .  .  .  We  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  a  didactic  moral  may  not  be  well  made  the 
undercurrent  of  a  poetic  thesis  ;  but  that  it  can  never  be  well 
put  so  obtrusively  forth  as  in  the  majority  of  his  composi- 
tions. ...  It  will  be  at  once  evident  .  .  .  that 
he  regards  the  inculcation  of  a  moral  as  essential.  .  .  . 
Didacticism  is  the  prevalent  tone  of  his  song.  His  invention, 
his  imagery,  his  all,  is  made  subservient  to  the  elucidation  of 
one  or  more  points,  .  .  .  which  he  looks  upon  as  truth." 
— Edgar  A.  Poe. 

"  Shall  we  think  less  of  our  poet  because  he  aimed  in  his 
verse  not  merely  to  please,  but  also  to  impress  some  elevating 
thought  in  the  minds  of  his  readers?  .  .  .  No  poet  knows 
better  than  Longfellow  how  to  impress  a  moral  without  seem- 
ing to  preach. ' '  —  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


646  LONGFELLOW 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thanks,  thanks  to  thee,  my  worthy  friend, 
For  the  lesson  thou  hast  taught ! 
Thus  at  the  flaming  forge  of  life 
Our  fortunes  must  be  wrought ; 
Thus  on  its  sounding  anvil  shaped 
Each  burning  deed  and  thought." 

—  The  Village  Blacksmith. 

"  Big  words  do  not  smite  like  war-clubs, 
Boastful  breath  is  not  a  bow-string — 
Taunts  are  not  so  sharp  as  arrows, 
Deeds  are  better  things  than  words  are, 
Actions  mightier  than  boastings." — Hiawatha. 

"  And  thou,  too,  whosoe'er  thou  art, 

That  readest  this  brief  psalm, 
As  one  by  one  thy  hopes  depart, 
Be  resolute  and  calm. 

"  Oh,  fear  not  in  a  world  like  this, 

And  thou  shalt  know  ere  long — 
Know  how  sublime  a  thing  it  is 
To  suffer  and  be  strong." —  7 he  Light  of  Stars. 

9.  Flexibility  —  Variety  —  Lyric    Power.  —  "  His 

command  of  many  meters,  each  adapted  to  his  special  sub- 
ject, shows  also  how  artistically  he  uses  sound  to  reenforce 
vision,  and  satisfy  the  ear  while  pleasing  the  eye. 

"  *  When  descends  on  the  Atlantic 
The  gigantic 

Storm-wind  of  the  equinox, 
Landward  in  his  wrath  he  scourges 
The  toiling  surges, 

Laden  with  sea-weed  from  the  rocks.' 

The  ear  least  skilled  to  detect  the  harmonies  of  verse  feels  the 
obvious  effect  of  lines  like  these.  In  his  long  poems  .  .  . 
Longfellow  never  repeats  himself.  He  occupies  a  new  domain 


LONGFELLOW  647 

of  poetry  with  each  successive  poem,  and  always  gives  the  pub- 
lic the  delightful  shock  of  a  new  surprise." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"His  verse  has  grace,  melody,  and  variety  that  leave  no 
room  for  criticism.  ...  It  must  be  admitted  that  there 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  work  of  any  other  poet  such  variety, 
both  as  regards  themes  and  treatment,  as  in  the  cycle  of  Long- 
fellow's poems.  .  .  .  We  are  struck  by  the  variety  and 
fitness  of  the  metrical  forms.  .  .  .  Hardly  any  poetry 
of  our  age  has  produced  so .  many  styles  of  effective  rhythm. 
He  employed  successfully  nearly  all  the  rhythmic 
forms  of  which  the  language  is  capable,  except  blank  verse." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  With  Longfellow's  faculty  of  putting  a  story  into  rippling 
verse  almost  as  lightly  as  another  would  tell  it  in  prose,  we  find 
ourselves  assured  of  as  many  poems  as  he  had  themes. 
He  combined  beauty  with  feeling  in  lyrical  trifles  which  rival 
those  of  Tennyson  and  other  masters  of  technique,  and  was 
almost  our  earliest  maker  of  verse  that  might  be  termed  exquis- 
ite. .  .  .  Longfellow,  employing  regular  forms  of  verse, 
was  flexible  where  many  are  awkward." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"Although  Longfellow  was  not  fond  of  metrical  contor- 
tions and  acrobatic  achievements,  he  well  knew  the  effect  of 
skilful  variation  in  the  forms  of  verse  and  well-managed  re- 
frains or  repetitions.  .  .  .  Nothing  lasts  like  a  coin  or  a 
lyric.  ...  I  think  we  may  venture  to  say  that  some  of 
the  shorter  poems  of  Longfellow  must  surely  reach  a  remote 
posterity  and  be  considered  then,  as  now,  ornaments  to  Eng- 
lish literature.  We  may  compare  them  with  the  best  short 
poems  of  the  language  without  fearing  that  they  will  suffer. " 
—  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

"Our  vain  desire 

Aches  for  the  voice  we  loved  so  long  to  hear 
In  Dorian  flute-notes  breathing  soft  and  clear — 
The  sweet  contralto  that  could  never  tire." 
—  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


648  LONGFELLOW 

"  The  melody  of  this  versification  is  very  remarkable  :  some 
of  his  stanzas  sound  with  the  richest  and  sweetest  music  of 
which  language  is  capable." — C.  C.  Felton. 

"  His  works  are  graceful,  tender,  pensive,  gentle,  melodi- 
ous— the  strain  of  a  troubadour."— George  William  Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  T£e  ocean  old, 
Centuries  old, 

Strong  as  youth,  and  as  uncontrolled, 
Paces  restless  to  and  fro, 
Up  and  down  the  sands  of  gold. 
His  beating  heart  is  not  at  rest ; 
And  far  and  wide, 
With  ceaseless  flow, 
His  beard  of  snow 
Heaves  with  the  heaving  of  his  breast." 

—  The  Building  of  the  Ship. 

"  Out  of  the  bosom  of  the  Air, 

Out  of  the  cloud-folds  of  her  garments  shaken, 
Over  the  woodlands  brown  and  bare, 

Over  the  harvest-fields  forsaken, 
Silent  and  soft  and  slow 
Descends  the  snow. 

"  Even  as  our  cloudy  fancies  take 

Suddenly  shape  in  some  divine  expression, 

Even  as  the  troubled  heart  doth  make 
In  the  white  countenance  confession, 

The  troubled  sky  reveals 

The  grief  it  feels." — Snow-Flakes. 

"  This  song  o£  mine 

Is  a  Song  of  the  YJae 
To  be  sung  by  the  glowing  embers 

Qf  wayside  inns, 

When  the  .rain  begins 
To  darken  the  drear  Novembers." 

—  Cataivba  Wine, 


LONGFELLOW  649 

10.  Narrative  Power. — "  He  was  the  first  American 
to  compose  sustained  narrative  poems  that  gained  and  kept  a 
place  in  literature.  .  .  .  Longfellow  again  and  again  re- 
ceived his  crown  of  praise  ;  and  this  ...  in  return  for 
the  service  in  which  he  was  easily  first — the  art  which  gained 
for  an  old-time  minstrel  a  willing  largess,  that  of  the  racon- 
teur, the  teller  of  bewitching  tales.  .  .  .  This  was  due  to 
a  modern  and  natural  style,  to  the  sweet  variety  of  his  meas- 
ures, and  to  his  ease  in  dialogue.  His  frequent  gayety  and 
constant  sense  of  the  humanities  made  him  a  true  story-teller 
for  the  multitude." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

11  Mr.  Longfellow's  method  of  telling  a  story  will  compare 
favorably  .  .  .  with  any  of  the  recognized  masters  of 
English  narrative  verse  from  Chaucer  down.  .  .  .  He 
has  more  than  held  his  own  against  all  English-writing  poets, 
and  in  no  walk  of  poetry  so  positively  as  that  of  telling  a  story. 
In  an  age  of  story-tellers,  he  stands  at  their  head,  not  only  in 
the  poems  I  have  mentioned,  but  also  in  the  lesser  stories  in- 
cluded in  his  '  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn.'  " — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"  Longfellow's  power  of  picturing  to  the  eye  and  the  soul 
a  scene,  a  place,  an  event,  a  person,  is  almost  unrivalled." — 
£.  P.  Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  King  Olaf  heard  the  cry, 
Saw  the  red  light  in  the  sky, 

Laid  his  hand  upon  his  sword, 
As  he  leaned  upon  the  railing, 
And  his  ships  went  sailing,  sailing, 

Northward  into  Drontheim  fiord. 

"  There  he  stood  as  one  who  dreamed  ; 
And  the  red  light  glanced  and  gleamed 

On  the  armor  that  he  wore  ; 
And  he  shouted,  as  the  rifted 
Streamers  o'er  him  shook  and  shifted: 
'  I  accept  thy  challenge,  Thor.'  " 

—  The  Saga  of  King  Olaf. 


650  LONGFELLOW 

"  Meanwhile  Standish  had  noted  the  faces  and  figures  of  Indians 
Peeping  and  creeping  about  from  bush  to  tree  in  the  forest, 
Feigning  to  look   for  game,  with    arrows    set  on  their  bow- 
strings, 
Drawing   about  him   still  closer  and   closer  the   net   of  the 

ambush. 

But  undaunted  he  stood,  and  dissembled  and  treated  them 
smoothly."—  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish. 

11  In  a  great  castle  near  Valladolid, 

Moated  and  high  and  by  fair  woodlands  hid, 
There  dwelt,  as  from  the  chronicles  we  learn, 
An  qld  Hidalgo,  proud  and  taciturn, 
Whose  name  has  perished  with  his  towers  of  stone, 
tfid  all  his  actions  save  this  one  alone." 

—  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn. 


II.   Profuse,    Sometimes    Labored,   Imagery.— 

.very  thing  suggested  an  image  except  when  his  imagery 
rfggested  the  thought  of  which  he  made  it  seem  the  reflection. 
.  .  .  He  hunts  about  for  some  emotion  or  the  phase  of 
life  which  these  things  aptly  illustrate.  This  process  not  sel- 
dom becomes  a  vice  of  style.  He  constantly  applied  his  im- 
agery in  a  formal  way.  .  .  .  But  whether  his  metaphors 
came  of  themselves  or  with  prayer  and  fasting,  they  always* 
came,  and  often  were  novel  and  poetic." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Not  only  was  his  poetry  itself  instinct  with  artistic  power, 
but  his  appropriating  genius  drew  within  the  circle  of  his 
art  a  great  variety  of  illustration  and  suggestion  from  the 
other  arts.  ...  He  had  a  catholic  taste,  and  his  rich 
decoration  of  simple  themes  was  the  most  persuasive  agency  at 
work  in  familiarizing  Americans  with  the  treasures  of  art  and 
legend  in  the  old  world." — Horace  E.  Scudder. 

"The  literary  decoration  of  his  style,  the  aroma  and  color 
and  richness,  so  to  speak,  which  it  derives  from  his  ample  ac- 
complishments in  literature,  are  incomparable.  His  verse  is 
embroidered  with  allusion  and  names  and  illustrations  wrought 
with  a  taste  so  true  and  a  skill  so  rare  that  the  robe,  though  it 


LONGFELLOW  65 1 

be  cloth  of  gold,  is  as  finely  flexible  as  linen,  and  still  beauti- 
fully reveals,  not  conceals,  the  living  form." — George  William 
Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Arrayed  in  its  robes  of  russet  and  scarlet  and  yellow, 
Bright  with  the  sheen  of  the  dew,  each  glittering  tree  of  the 

forest 
Flashed  like  the  plane-tree  the  Persian  adorned  with  mantles 

and  jewels." — Evangeline. 

"  And  as  she  gazed  from  the  window,  she  saw  serenely  the  moon 
pass 

Forth  from  the  folds  of  a  cloud,  and  one  star  follow  her  foot- 
steps, 

As  out  of  Abraham's  tent  young  Ishmael  wandered  with 
Hagar. 

"  Bright  rose  the  sun  next  day ;  and  all  the  flowers  of  the  garden 
Bathed  his   shining   feet   with   their   tears,   and  anointed  his 

tresses 
With   the   delicious   balm   that   they  bore   in   their  vases  of 

crystal." — Evangeline. 

"  For  now  the  western  skies 
Are  red  with  sunset,  and  gray  mists  arise 
Like  damps  that  gather  on  a  dead  man's  face." 

—  Three  Friends  of  Mine. 

"  How  slowly  through  the  lilac-scented  air 

Descends  the  tranquil  moon  !  Like  thistle-down 
The  vapory  clouds  float  in  the  peaceful  sky." 

—  The  Spanish  Student. 

12.  Occasional  Vigor. — While  Longfellow's  poetry,  as 
a  whole,  cannot  be  called  vigorous,  there  are  a  few  marked 
exceptions.  In  speaking  of  the  "  Skeleton  in  Armor"  Sted- 
man  says:  "To  old-fashioned  people,  this  heroic  ballad, 
written  over  forty  years  ago,  is  worth  a  year's  product  of  what 
I  may  term  Kensington-stitch  verse." 

"  There  is  much  of  the  old  Norse  energy  in  this  composition 


6$2  LONGFELLOW 

["The  Skeleton  in  Armor  "] — that  rough,  ravenous  battle- 
spirit,  which  for  a  time  makes  the  reader's  blood  rush  and 
tingle  in  warlike  sympathy." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  '  The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus  '  is  deservedly  admired,  es- 
pecially for  the  vigor  of  its  descriptions.  .  .  .  The  bal- 
lad of  '  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  '  ...  is  full  of  the  an- 
cient vigor,  such  as  it  was  when  the  language  was  new,  and 
custom  had  not  worn  off  the  sharp  edges  of  words." — F.  H. 
Underwood. 
"  You  may  say  that  he's  smooth  and  all  that  till  you're  hoarse, 

But  remember  that  elegance  also  is  force ; 

After  polishing  granite  as  much  as  you  will, 

The  heart  keeps  its  tough  old  persistency  still." — Lowell. 

"  Whenever  Mr.  Longfellow's  translation  [of  Dante]  is  kept 
free  from  oddities  of  diction  and  construction,  it  is  very  ani- 
mated and  vigorous." — -John  Fiske. 

"The  poem  ["  Hymn  of  the  Moravian  Nuns"] 
has  a  native  fire  and  an  enthusiasm  kindled  by  the  thought  of 
personal  sacrifice  in  a  great  cause.     So,  too,  in  the  '  Burial  of 
the  Minnisink '  the  poetic  passion  flames  forth  in 

a  single  bold  phrase  at  the  end  of  the  poem." — Horace  E. 
Scudder. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Up  leaped  the  Captain  of  Plymouth,  and  stamped  on  the  floor, 

till  his  armor 

Clanged  on  the  wall,  where  it  hung,  with  a  sound  of  sinister 
omen. 

"  Wildly  he  shouted,  and  loud  :  'John  Alden  !  you  have  be- 
trayed me  ! 

Me,  Miles  Standish,  your  friend !  have  supplanted,  defrauded, 
betrayed  me  ! 

One  of  my  ancestors  ran  his  sword  through  the  heart  of  Wat 
Tyler  ; 

Who  shall  prevent  me  from  running  my  own  through  the  heart 
of  a  traitor  ?  " — The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish. 


LONGFELLOW  653 

"  Silent  a  moment  they  stood,  in  speechless  wonder,  and  then 
rose 

Louder  and  ever  louder  a  wail  of  sorrow  and  anger, 

And,  by  one  impulse  moved,  they  madly  rushed  to  the  door- 
way. 

Vain  was  the  hope  of  escape  ;  and  cries  and  fierce  impreca- 
tions 

Rang  through  the  house  of  prayer  ;  and  high  o'er  the  heads  of 
the  others 

Rose,  with  his  arms  uplifted,  the  figure  of  Basil  the  black- 
smith, 

As,  on  a  stormy  sea,  a  spar  is  tossed  by  the  billows. 

Flushed  was  his  face  and  distorted  with  passion  ;  and  wildly  he 
shouted — 

*  Down  with  the  tyrants  of  England  !  We  never  have  sworn 
them  allegiance ! 

Death  to  these  foreign  soldiers,  who  seize  on  our  homes  and 
our  harvests ! '  " — Evangeline. 

"  '  And  as  to  catch  the  gale 

Round  veered  the  flapping  sail, 
Death  !  was  the  helmsman's  hail, 

Death  without  quarter ! 
Midships  with  iron  keel 
Struck  we  her  ribs  of  steel ; 
Down  her  black  hulk  did  reel  , 

Through  the  black  water  ! 

"  '  As  with  his  wings  aslant, 
Sails  the  fierce  cormorant, 
Seeking  some  rocky  haunt, 

With  his  prey  laden  ; 
So  toward  the  open  main, 
Beating  to  sea  again, 
Through  the  wild  hurricane 
Bore  I  the  maiden.'  " 

—  The  Skeleton  in  Armor. 

13.  Mild    Religious    Earnestness— Trust— Opti- 
mism.— "  Through  all  the  romantic  grace  and  elegance  of  the 


654  LONGFELLOW 

*  Voices  of  the  Night '  and  '  Hyperion,'  there  is  a  moral  ear- 
nestness which  is  even  more  remarkable  in  the  poems  than  in 
the  romance.  .  .  .  The  'Psalm  of  Life'  was  the  very 
heart-beat  of  the  American  conscience,  and  the  '  Footsteps 
of  Angels '  was  a  hymn  of  the  fond  yearning  of  every  human 
heart.  .  .  .  It  is  the  moral  purity  of  his  verse  which  at 
once  charms  the  heart,  and  in  his  first  most  famous  poem,  the 
'  Psalm  of  Life,'  it  is  the  direct  inculcation  of  a  moral  pur- 
pose."—  George  William  Curtis. 

11  He  never  sounds  a  note  of  despair;  doubt  never  sweeps 
darkly  across  his  soul.  .  .  .  You  who  have  ceased  to  be- 
lieve in  the  progress*  of  right  and  the  victory  of  good  may  be 
recalled  to  a  healthier  and  nobler  view  by  the  indomitable 
hopefulness  and  deep  trust  to  be  found  in  the  utterances  of 
Longfellow,  "—jy.  £.  Haweis. 

1 '  It  [his  poetry]  is  the  gospel  of  good-will  set  to  music.  It 
has  carried  sweetness  and  light  to  thousands  of  homes.  It  is 
blended  with  our  holiest  affections  and  our  immortal  hopes." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  The  great  characteristic  of  Longfellow — that  of  addressing 
the  moral  nature  through  the  imagination,  of  linking  moral 
truth  to  intellectual  beauty — is  a  far  greater  excellence. 
A  person,  in  reading  the  '  Psalm  of  Life/  does  not 
say  that  this  poem  '  is  distinguished  for  nicety  of  epithet  and 
elaborate,  scholarly  finish ;  '  but  rather,  '  this  poem  touches 
the  heroic  string  of  my  nature,  breathes  energy  into  my  heart, 
sustains  my  lagging  purposes,  and  fixes  my  thoughts  on  what 
is  stable  and  eternal.'  "-E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  A  religious  trust  breathes  through  all  his  books,  the  spirit 
of  faith.  .  .  .  In  a  doubting  or  half-believing  age,  there 
is  no  query  of  the  primal  truths  of  God  and  heaven  on  his 
page." — C.  A.  BartoL 

"  As  long  as  the  heart  of  humanity  shall  beat,  his  voice  will 
be  heard  in  tones  of  music,  singing  words  of  consolation  and 
hope."—/?,  H.  Stoddard. 


LONGFELLOW  655 

"  It  ["  Evangeline  "]  is  a  psalm  of  love  and  forgiveness ;  the 
gentleness  and  peace  of  Christian  meekness  and  forbearance 
breathe  through  it." — Whittier. 

"  His  heart  was  pure,  his  purpose  high, 

His  thoughts  serene,  his  patience  vast. 
He  put  all  strifes  of  passion  by 

And  lived  to  God  from  first  to  last." 

—  William  Winter. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Then  shall  the  good  stand  in  immortal  bloom, 

In  the  fair  gardens  of  that  second  birth  ; 
And  each  bright  blossom  mingle  its  perfume 

With  that  of  flowers  which  never  bloomed  on  earth." 

— God's  Acre. 

"  Then  pealed  the  bells  more  loud  and  deep  : 
'  God  is  not  dead  ;  nor  doth  he  sleep  ! 
The  Wrong  shall  fail, 
The  Right  prevail, 
With  peace  on  earth,  good  will  to  men.'  " 

— Christmas  Bells. 

"  Let  us  be  patient !     These  severe  afflictions 

Not  from  the  ground  arise, 
But  oftentimes  celestial  benedictions 
Assume  this  dark  disguise. 

We  see  but  dimly  through  the  mists  and  vapors  ; 

Amid  these  earthly  damps 
What  seem  to  us  but  sad,  funereal  tapers 

May  be  heaven's  distant  lamps." — Resignation. 

14.  Simplicity— Naturalness. — "In  respect  of  this 
simplicity  and  naturalness,  his  style  is  in  strong  contrast  with 
that  of  many  writers  of  our  time.  There  is  no  straining  for 
effect,  there  is  no  torturing  of  rhythm  for  novel  patterns,  no 
wearisome  iteration  of  petted  words,  no  inelegant  clipping  of 


656  LONGFELLOW 

syllables  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  a  verse,  no  affected  archa- 
isms, rarely  any  liberty  taken  with  language — unless  it  may  be 
in  the  form  of  a  few  words  in  the  translation  of  Dante." 
— Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

"He  was  no  word-monger,  no  winder  of  coil  upon  coil 
about  a  subtle  theme.  ...  He  used  his  culture  not  to 
veil  the  word,  but  to  make  it  clear.  He  drew  upon  it  for  the 
people  in  a  manner  which  they  could  relish  and  comprehend." 
— £.  C.  Stedman. 

11  The  clear  thought,  the  true  feeling,  the  pure  aspiration,  is 
expressed  with  limpid  simplicity.  .  .  .  His  poems  are 
apples  of  gold  in  pictures  of  silver.  There  is  nothing  in  them 
excessive,  nothing  overwrought,  nothing  strained  into  tur- 
gidity,  obscurity,  and  nonsense.  There  is  sometimes,  indeed, 
a  fine  stateliness,  as  in  the  '  Arsenal  at  Springfield,'  and  even 
a  resounding  splendor  of  diction,  as  in  (  Sandalphon.'  But 
when  the  melody  is  most  delicate  it  is  simple.  The  poet 
throws  nothing  into  the  mist  to  make  it  large.  How  purely 
melodious  his  verse  can  be  without  losing  the  thought  or  its 
most  transparent  expression,  is  seen  in  «  The  Evening  Star  ' 
and  '  Snow-Flakes.'  " — George  William  Curtis. 

"His  thought,  though  often  deep,  was  never  obscure.  His 
lyrics  .  .  .  have  a  singing  simplicity.  .  .  .  This 
simplicity  was  the  the  result  of  rare,  artistic  repression  ;  it  was 
not  due  to  any  poverty  of  intellect." — Brander  Matthews. 

'  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  twilight  is  sad  and  cloudy, 
The  wind  blows  wild  and  free, 
And  like  the  wings  of  sea-birds 
Flash  the  white  caps  of  the  sea. 

"  But  in  the  fisherman's  cottage 
There  shines  a  ruddier  light, 
And  a  little  face  at  the  window 
Peers  out  into  the  night. 


LONGFELLOW  657 

"  Close,  close  it  is  pressed  to  the  window, 
As  if  those  childish  eyes 
Were  looking  into  the  darkness 
To  see  some  form  arise." — Twilight. 

"  He  goes  on  Sunday  to  the  church, 
And  sits  among  his  boys  ; 
He  hears  the  parson  pray  and  preach, 
He  hears  his  daughter's  voice 
Singing  in  the  village  choir, 
And  it  makes  his  heart  rejoice. 

"  It  sounds  to  him  like  her  mother's  voice, 
Singing  in  Paradise  ! 
He  needs  must  think  of  her  once  more, 
How  in  the  grave  she  lies  ; 
And  with  his  hard,  rough  hand  he  wipes 
A  tear  out  of  his  eyes." 

—  The  Village  Blacksmith. 

•'  On  sunny  slope  and  beechen  swell, 
The  shadowed  light  of  evening  fell ; 
And,  where  the  maple's  leaf  was  brown, 
With  soft  and  silent  lapse  came  down 
The  glory  that  the  wood  receives, 
At  sunset,  on  its  golden  leaves. 

"  Far  upward  in  the  mellow  light 

Rose  the  blue  hills.     One  cloud  of  white 

Around  a  far  uplifted  cone, 

In  the  warm  blush  of  evening  shone  ; 

An  image  of  the  silver  lakes, 

By  which  the  Indian's  soul  awakes." 

— Burial  of  the  Minnisink. 
42 


BROWNING,  1812-1889 

Biographical  Outline. — Robert  Browning,  born  May  7, 
1812,  at  Camberwell,  London  ;  father  a  clerk  in  the  Bank  of 
England  and  a  man  of  fine  literary  taste  ;  mother  "  a  Scot- 
tish gentlewoman"  descended  from  German  stock;  Brown- 
ing is  a  precocious  child  of  great  activity  and  fiery  temper  ; 
he  enters  a  private  school  in  infancy,  makes  verses  before  he 
can  write,  and  so  excels  older  children  in  his  studies  as  to 
cause  maternal  jealousy ;  later  he  enters  the  private  school  of 
the  Rev.  Thomas  Ready,  where  he  remains  till  he  is  fourteen  ; 
he  is  passionately  devoted  to  his  mother,  who  gives  him  a 
careful  biblical  training;  he  manifests  also  an  early  fondness 
for  animal  pets  ;  he  exhibits,  as  a  boy,  contempt  for  the  edu- 
cational methods  of  his  school  and  for  the  stupidity  of  his 
school- fellows,  although  he  writes  plays  and  compels  the  other 
boys  to  act  them  ;  his  father  is  a  great  reader,  and  the  house 
is  "  literally  crammed  with  books;  "  Browning  reads  omniv- 
orously,  preferring  history  and  literature,  and  early  develops 
a  fondness  for  rare  books  and  first  editions ;  he  becomes  es- 
pecially interested  in  the  writers  of  the  Elizabethan  school 
and  in  Byron  ;  at  the  age  of  twelve  he  writes  a  "  volume  "  of 
poems  showing  strong  traces  of  Byron's  influence,  and  calls  it 
"  Incondita;  "  his  father  seeks  in  vain  for  a  publisher  of  this 
volume,  and  the  original  was  probably  destroyed  by  Brown- 
ing, although  a  copy  made  by  a  friend  of  his  mother  was  ex- 
tant till  1871,  when  Browning  destroyed  it;  "  Incondita" 
was  read  by  the  Rev.  W.  J.  Fox,  who  afterward  became 
Browning's  literary  adviser  and  patron  ;  the  copy  so  long  pre- 
served in  manuscript  was  made  by  Miss  Flower,  a  musician  of 
rare  merit,  who  afterward  wrote  the  hymn  "Nearer,  My  God,  to 

658 


BROWNING  659 

Thee ; "  Browning  was  deeply  devoted  to  her,  and  she  is  sup- 
posed to  have  inspired  his  "Pauline;  "  in  1826  he  acciden- 
tally picks  up  "  Mr.  Shelley's  atheistical  poem,"  as  the  book- 
stall advertisement  called  it ;  soon  afterward  he  obtains  most  of 
Shelley's  writings  and  three  volumes  of  Keats's,  although  the 
local  booksellers  then  hardly  knew  these  poets'  names  ;  Shelley 
and  Keats  came  to  Browning,  as  he  said,  "  like  two  nightin- 
gales singing  together  in  a  May  night,"  and  they  had  an  im- 
portant influence  on  the  development  of  his  genius  ;  he  long 
regarded  Shelley  as  the  greatest  poet  of  his  age,  if  not  of  any 
age;  for  two  years  after  reading  "  Queen  Mab  "  Browning 
becomes  "  a  professing  atheist  and  a  practising  vegetarian," 
and  he  returns  to  a  natural  diet  only  when  he  sees  that  his 
eyes  are  becoming  weakened  by  his  abstention  ;  his  ' '  athe- 
ism "  soon  cured  itself. 

As  Browning's  father  is  himself  a  scholar,  he  determines  to 
educate  the  boy  at  home,  where  he  learns  music,  dancing, 
riding,  boxing,  and  fencing,  and  excels  in  the  last  three  ac- 
complishments ;  in  music  he  makes  such  advancement  as  to 
write  the  airs  for  the  songs  he  sung,  and  he  remained  all  his 
life  a  fine  musical  critic ;  he  afterward  destroyed  his  boyish 
musical  compositions  ;  during  his  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
years  he  acquires  a  good  knowledge  of  the  French  language 
and  literature  under  a  native  tutor,  and  in  his  eighteenth  year 
he  attends,  for  a  term  or  two,  a  Greek  class  at  the  University 
of  London  ;  he  seems  to  have  entirely  neglected  mathematics, 
logic,  and  the  other  branches  that  train  the  thinking  powers 
— studies  that  were  "  doubly  requisite  for  a  nature  in  which 
the  creative  imagination  was  predominant  over  all  the  other 
mental  faculties  ;  "  this  omission  doubtless  accounts  in  great 
part  for  the  unfortunate  involutions  and  inversions  of  his  style ; 
during  his  later  teens  his  restlessness  and  aggressiveness  be- 
came intense,  and  he  "  gratuitously  proclaimed  himself  every- 
thing that  he  was  and  some  things  that  he  was  not ;  "  one  of 
his  dearest  friends  at  this  period  was  Alfred  Domett,  whom 


660  BROWNING 

Browning  afterward  immortalized  in  "  Waring"  and  also  in 
"  The  Guarding  Angel ;  "  another  was  James  Silverthorne,  a 
cousin  on  the  mother's  side,  who  is  the  youth  referred  to  in 
"  May  and  Death  ;  "  although  Browning  took  a  deep  interest 
in  art  and  artists,  his  choice  of  poetry  as  a  profession  was  ll  a 
foregone  conclusion  ;  "  his  early  art-work  was  confined  to 
modelling  ;  his  father's  suggestion  that  he  study  law  was 
promptly  rejected,  as  was  a  virtual  offer  of  a  position  in  the 
Bank  of  England  ;  he  was  never  a  regular  churchgoer,  but  was 
always  very  fond  of  the  drama,  often  in  youth  walking  from 
Richmond  to  London  to  hear  Edmund  Kean. 

Browning  was  generously  supported  in  his  poetical  work  by 
his  father,  who  bore  the  entire  expense  of  publishing  "  Para- 
celsus," "  Sordello,"  and  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates  " — poems 
that  brought  no  financial  return  to  their  author ;  as  a  prelim- 
inary to  his  life-work  in  literature,  Browning  carefully  digests 
the  whole  of  Johnson's  Dictionary  ;  in  1833,  when  he  is  but 
twenty,  he  writes  "  Pauline,"  which  is  published  anonymously, 
the  expense  being  borne  by  an  aunt ;  this  poem  is  favorably 
reviewed  by  Browning's  friend  Fox  in  his  Monthly  Repository, 
while  another  critic  calls  it  "  a  piece  of  pure  bewilderment ;  " 
in  the  winter  of  1833-34  Browning  visits  St.  Petersburg  as  the 
secretary  and  guest  of  his  friend  Benckhausen,  then  the  Rus- 
sian Consul-General  at  London  ;  on  his  return  he  applies  for 
a  position  connected  with  a  proposed  mission  to  Persia,  but 
is  unsuccessful;  from  1834  to  1836  he  contributes  to  the 
Monthly  Repositoty  five  poems,  of  which  the  first  is  now  ex- 
tant only  in  his  "  Personalia,"  while  the  other  four  were  af- 
terward incorporated,  respectively,  into  "  Pippa  Passes," 
"Bells  and  Pomegranates,"  and  "James  Lee's  Wife  ;"  Brown- 
ing completes  "  Paracelsus  "  in  March,  1835,  and,  with  Fox's 
aid,  finds  a  publisher  ;  the  theme  of  "  Paracelsus"  was  sug- 
gested to  Browning  by  Count  Ripart  Monclar  ("  Amedee"), 
a  warm  friend  of  his,  who  was  then  in  London  acting  as  the 
private  agent  of  the  royal  French  exiles  then  sojourning  in 


BROWNING  66 1 

England;  "Paracelsus"  is  called  "rubbish"  by  a  critic  in 
the  Athenaum,  but  is  warmly  defended  by  John  Forster  in  the 
Examiner — a  service  that  results  in  the  formation  of  a  lasting 
.friendship  between  Browning  and  Forster;  about  1835  the 
poet's  father  removes  from  Camberwell  to  a  house  in  Hatcham, 
where  he  finds  more  room  for  his  library  of  6,000  volumes, 
and  where  Browning  makes  a  pet  of  a  garden  toad,  immortal- 
ized in  one  of  the  poems  of  "  Asolando  ;  "  soon  after  the  re- 
moval to  Hatcham  Browning  enters  upon  friendly  relations 
with  Carlyle,  and  makes  the  acquaintance  of  Talfourd,  Home, 
Leigh  Hunt,  Proctor,  Milnes,  Dickens,  Wordsworth,  and 
Landor,  all  of  whom  he  meets  frequently  at  dinner  at  the 
homes  of  Talfourd,  Fox,  and  Macready  ;  at  these  dinners  new 
plays  and  poems  often  had  their  first  reading ;  in  December, 
1835,  Browning  and  Forster  are  entertained  by  Macready  at 
his  country  home  at  Elstree,  and  a  warm  friendship  exists 
thereafter  between  the  actor  and  the  poet ;  while  at  Elstree 
Browning  meets  Miss  Hawprth,  the  "  Eyebright  "  of  "  Sor- 
dello,"  and  the  friend  to  whom  were  addressed  some  of  the 
best  of  his  letters  now  extant ;  at  a  dinner  in  Macready's 
house  May  26,  1836,  where  Wordsworth,  Talfourd,  Landor, 
and  Miss  Mitford  are  present,  Macready  suggests  to  Browning 
the  composition  of  a  drama;  the  result  is  his  "  Strafford," 
which  was  presented  by  Macready  and  his  company  at  the 
Coven t  Garden  Theatre  May  i,  1837,  and  had  a  short  but 
successful  course ;  it  had  been  published  during  the  previous 
April  by  Longman,  and  was  the  first  of  Browning's  works  for 
whose  publication  he  did  not  pay  ;  at  this  period  he  is  de- 
scribed by  a  friend  as  "just  a  trifle  of  a  dandy,  addicted  to 
lemon-colored  kid  gloves  and  such  things;"  he  works  at 
"  Sordello  "  during  the  remainder  of  1837  and,  in  the  spring 
of  1838,  starts  on  his  first  journey  to  Italy  ;  landing  at  Trieste, 
he  visits  Venice,  Treviso,  Bassano,  Asolo,  Vicenza,  Padua, 
Verona,  and  then  Trent,  Innspriick,  Munich,  Salzburg,  Frank- 
fort, Mayence,  going  thence  down  the  Rhine  to  Cologne  and 


662  BROWNING 

back  to  London  by  way  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  Liege,  and  Ant- 
werp; while  at  Trieste  he  wrote  "How  they  Brought  the 
Good  News  from  Ghent  to  Aix  "  (in  pencil  on  the  cover  of  a 
book)  and  "  Home  Thoughts  by  the  Sea;  "  the  impressions 
received  during  this  tour  at  Asolo  and  at  Venice  appeared 
later  in  "  Pippa  Passes  "  and  "  In  a  Gondola." 

In  1839  Browning  first  meets  the  old  boyhood  school-friend 
of  his  father,  Mr.  Kenyon,  at  whose  home  he  frequently  met 
Wordsworth  thereafter,  and  who  was  to  have  a  peculiar  rela- 
tion to  the  Brownings'  future  career;  in  1840  he  publishes 
"Sordello,"  which  was  longer  in  preparation  than  any  other 
of  his  poems  ;  Browning  afterward  declared  that  in  writing 
"  Sordello  "  his  "  stress  had  lain  on  the  incidents  in  the  de- 
velopment of  a  soul,  little  else  being,  to  his  mind,  worthy  of 
study;  "  the  undue  condensation  of  thought  in  "  Sordello," 
and  its  consequent  obscurity,  are  due  largely  to  a  criticism 
made  on  his  "  Paracelsus  "  by  John  Sterling  and  repeated  by 
Miss  Haworth  to  Browning  ;  he  seems  to  have  taken  the  crit- 
icism too  seriously  ;  in  1841  "  Pippa  Passes  "  appears  as  the 
first  of  a  series  of  cheap  pamphlets  published  by  Moxon  un- 
der the  title  of  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates" — a  title  that 
Browning  condescended  to  explain  in  the  last  number  as  "  a 
most  familiar  patristic  phrase  for  a  mixture  of  poetry  with 
thought,  or  of  faith  with  good  works;  "  the  other  poems  of 
Browning  published  under  the  title  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates," 
with  their  respective  dates,  are  as  follows  :  "  King  Victor  and 
King  Charles,"  1842  ;  "  Dramatic  Lyrics,"  1842,  including 
the  "  Cavalier  Tunes,"  "  Marching  Along,"  "  Give  a  Rouse," 
1 <  Boots  and  Saddles,"  originally  called  "My  Wife  Ger- 
trude," and  "  Italy  and  France,"  "Camp  and  Cloister,"  "In 
a  Gondola/'  "Artemis  Prologizes,"  "Waring,"  "Queen 
Worship,"  "Madhouse  Cells,"  "Through  the  Metidja  to 
Abd-el-Kadr,  "  and  "  The  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin  ;  "  "  The 
Return  of  the  Druses,"  1843  ;  "A  Blot  on  the  'Scutcheon," 
1843;  "  Colombe's  Birthday,"  1844;  "  Dramatic  Romances 


BROWNING  663 

and  Lyrics,"  including  "  How  they  Brought  the  Good  News 
from  Ghent  to  Aix,"  "  Pictor  Ignotus"  "  Italy  in  England," 
"  England  in  Italy,"  "The  Lost  Leader,"  "The  Lost  Mis- 
tress," "Home  Thoughts  from  Abroad,"  "The  Tomb  at 
St.  Praxed's,"  "Garden  Fancies,"  "France  and  Spain," 
"The  Flight  of  the  Duchess,"  "Earth's  Immortalities,"  the 
song  "  Nay,  But  You  Who  Do  Not  Love  Her,"  "  The  Boy 
and  the  Angel,"  "  Night  and  Morning,"  "  Claret  and  To- 
kay," "Saul,"  "Time's  Revenges,"  and  "The  Glove;" 
"  Luria,  a  Soul's  Tragedy,"  1846  ;  "  A  Blot  on  the  'Scutch- 
eon "  was  written  in  fifteen  days  for  Macready,  who  meant  to 
play  a  principal  part  in  the  drama  when  produced ;  from  a 
statement  made  by  Browning  forty  years  later  it  now  appears 
that,  owing  either  to  Macready's  jealousy  or  to  his  financial 
straits,  the  play  was  not  fairly  staged  or  well  treated  ;  the 
result  was  a  severance  of  the  friendship  between  Browning  and 
Macready ;  a  letter  written  to  John  Forster  about  this  time 
expressing  his  "  almost  passionate  admiration  "  for  "  A  Blot 
on  the  'Scutcheon,"  was  withheld  from  Browning  and  from 
the  public  by  Forster  for  thirty  years  ;  "  Colombe's  Birth- 
day "  was  played  with  fair  success  in  1853;  four  of  the 
"Dramatic  Lyrics"  had  been  published  previously  in  the 
Monthly  Repository  and  six  of  the  "  Dramatic  Lyrics  and 
Romances  "  in  Hood 's  Magazine ',  for  the  sake  of  financial  aid 
to  Hood,  then  in  his  last  illness  ;  Browning  never  afterward 
wrote  for  the  magazines  except  from  philanthropic  motives,  as 
when  he  published  "  Herve  Riel "  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine 
in  1870  for  the  benefit  of  the  sufferers  in  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  ;  he  has  recorded  of  "  Artemis  Prologizes  "  that  "  it  was 
composed  much  against  my  endeavor,  while  in  bed  with  a 
fever;"  "Christina,"  originally  called  "Queen  Worship," 
was  dedicated  to  the  Spanish  Queen  ;  "  The  Pied  Piper  of 
Hamelin"  and  "The  Cardinal  and  the  Dog"  were  written 
to  amuse  Willie,  the  child  of  Macready,  who  was  then  con- 
fined to  the  house  with  illness,  and  who  undertook  to  "  il- 


664  BROWNING 

lustrate  "  these  poems  for  Browning;  "The  Lost  Leader" 
expressed  Browning's  sentiments  at  the  time  about  what  he 
considered  to  be  Wordsworth's  "abandonment  of  liberalism 
at  an  unlucky  juncture,"  although  he  afterward  referred  to  the 
poem  "  with  something  of  shame  and  contrition." 

In  the  autumn  of  1844  Browning  starts  again  for  Italy,  sail- 
ing to  Naples  and  travelling  thence  to  Rome  ;  on  his  return 
from  Rome  he  calls  on  Trelawney  at  Leghorn,  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  he  records  some  reminiscences  of  this  tour  in  his 
"  Englishman  in  Italy  ;  "  his  own  and  his  father's  friend,  John 
Kenyon,  was  a  cousin  of  Elizabeth  Barrett,  and  he  had  fre- 
quently spoken  to  the  Brownings  of  her  and  had  presented 
them  with  copies  of  her  poems;  on  Browning's  return  from 
Italy,  in  1844,  he  expresses  such  admiration  for  her  "Lady 
Geraldine's  Courtship  "  that  Kenyon  begs  him  to  write  to  the 
author  andtoexpress  to  her  personally  his  appreciation,  adding, 
"  My  cousin  is  a  great  invalid,  and  sees  no  one,  but  great  souls 
jump  at  sympathy;  "  the  result  is  the  beginning  of  Brown- 
ing's correspondence  with  Miss  Barrett ;  after  a  few  months, 
against  her  own  inclinations,  he  prevails  upon  her  to  allow 
him  to  visit  her,  although  she  calls  herself  "  only  a  weed,  fit  for 
the  ground  and  darkness;  "  the  visit  seals  Browning's  matri- 
monial fate :  love  succeeds  to  pity,  and,  after  persistently  re- 
peating a  proposition  of  marriage,  he  is  accepted  on  the  con- 
dition that  she  regain  her  health ;  the  two  poets  meet  three 
times  a  week,  but  the  visits  are  unknown  beyond  the  two 
families  and  Mr.  Kenyon  ;  late  in  the  summer  of  1846  Miss 
Barrett,  who  had  partially  recovered,  was  assured  by  her  phy- 
sician that  a  more  complete  recovery  depended  on  her  remov- 
al to  a  warmer  climate ;  her  father,  doubtless  believing  her 
incurable,  refused  to  permit  her  to  go  south,  and  she  conse- 
quently broke  with  him  and  her  family  and  was  married  to 
Browning  in  strict  privacy  on  the  i2th  of  September,  1846, 
at  St.  Pancras  Church,  London,  without  either  the  knowledge 
or  the  consent  of  her  father  ;  at  this  time  Browning,  though 


BROWNING  665 

thirty-four  years  of  age,  expressed  to  Miss  Barrett  a  will- 
ingness to  render  himself  more  eligible  as  a  husband  by 
studying  for  the  bar,  but  she  insisted  that  he  continue  to  de- 
vote himself  to  literature  ;  for  a  few  days  the  husband  and  wife 
return,  respectively,  to  their  own  homes,  and  on  the  evening 
of  September  191!!  they  sail  secretly  for  Paris,  by  way  of  Havre, 
accompanied  by  Mrs.  Browning's  maid  and  her  immortal  dog, 
"  Flush;  "  Mrs.  Browning  had  been  healthy  as  a  child,  but 
had  injured  her  spine  by  a  fall  in  her  thirteenth  year  ;  Brown- 
ing's family  are  at  first  much  disturbed  by  his  marriage  to  such 
an  invalid,  but  they  soon  welcome  her  to  their  hearts  and 
homes  ;  her  own  father  remains  unforgiving  and  unreconciled 
till  his  death  ;  in  Paris  the  Brownings  meet  Mrs.  Jameson, 
who  goes  with  them  to  Genoa,  whence  they  go,  soon,  to  Pisa 
and  settle  there  for  the  winter ;  as  Browning  destroyed  most 
of  his  letters  to  his  family  shortly  before  his  death,  the  details 
of  their  early  married  life  are  unknown,  except  so  far  as  may 
be  gleaned  from  Mrs.  Browning's  letters  to  Miss  Mitford,  to 
whom  she  writes  from  Paris:  "  He  has  drawn  me  back  to 
life  and  hope  again  when  I  had  done  with  both." 

They  leave  Pisa  in  April,  1847,  for  Florence,  where  they  first 
spend  five  days  with  the  monks  of  Vallombrosa,  and  then 
establish  themselves  in  the  city,  where  they  enter  into  close 
social  relations  with  Powers,  the  American  sculptor ;  during 
the  winter  of  1847-48  they  occupy  apartments  in  the  Palazzo 
Pitti  at  Florence,  just  opposite  the  Pitti  Palace  ;  early  in 
1848  Browning  is  severely  ill,  and  refuses  to  consult  a  phy- 
sician, but,  during  a  chance  call,  Father  Prout  prescribes  for 
him  and  restores  him  to  health  ;  in  the  summer  of  1848  the 
Brownings  take  and  permanently  furnish  "  six  beautiful  rooms 
and  a  kitchen  "  in  the  Guidi  Palace,  opposite  the  church  of 
San  Felice;  in  July,  1848,  Mrs.  Browning  reports  herself 
"quite  well  again  and  strong;"  during  this  summer  they 
sojourn  briefly  at  Fano  and  at  Ancona  ;  on  March  9,  1849, 
Browning's  son  is  born,  just  at  the  time  of  the  sudden  death 


666  BROWNING 

of  the  poet's  mother,  to  whom  he  had  remained  passionately 
attached  from  his  infancy;  the  shock  nearly  undermines  his 
health,  and,  with  his  wife,  he  seeks  recuperation  in  a  tour  along 
the  coast  to  Spezzia  and  thence  to  the  Baths  of  Lucca,  where 
they  remain  till  October  ;  at  Lucca  Mrs.  Browning  is  "  able  to 
climb  the  hills  with  Robert  and  help  him  lose  himself  in  the 
forests ;  "  they  return  to  Florence  late  in  the  autumn  of  1849, 
and  live  very  quietly  "  retreated  from  the  advances  of  the 
English  .society  here;"  in  the  summer  of  1850  they  visit 
Venice,  which  Mrs.  Browning  finds  "celestial"  and  "inef- 
fable," but  the  climate  proves  bad  for  Browning,  and  they  re- 
main but  a  few  weeks  ;  during  1850  they  are  on  intimate 
terms  with  Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli,  who  is  at  their  house  daily 
till  she  sails  on  her  fatal  homeward  voyage  ;  in  the  summer  of 
1851  they  return  for  the  first  time  since  their  marriage  to 
London,  where  Browning  commemorates  his  marriage  by 
kissing  the  paving-stones  in  front  of  St.  Pancras  Church ; 
Mrs.  Browning's  father  refuses  to  see  either  her  or  her  child  ; 
in  the  autumn  of  1851  they  go  to  Paris  in  company  with  Car- 
lyle,  and  settle  at  138  Avenue  des  Champs- Ely  sees,  where 
Carlyle  frequently  visits  them  ;  at  this  period  Browning  is  of 
much  service  to  Carlyle,  as  the  Scotchman  did  not  under- 
stand French  ;  while  in  Paris  the  Brownings  see  much  of 
George  Sand,  and  have  Beranger  for  a  near  neighbor ;  during 
this  winter  they  also  meet  Joseph  Milsand,  who  commends 
Browning's  poetry  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  ;  he  after- 
ward becomes  one  of  Browning's  warmest  friends,  and  is  a 
frequent  visitor  at  the  poet's  apartments ;  the  first  reprint  of 
"  Sordello,"  in  1863,  was  dedicated  to  Milsand,  as  were 
"Parleyings  with  Certain  People,"  published  in  1867,  within 
a  year  after  Milsand's  death  ;  in  December,  1848,  Browning 
had  issued  new  editions  of  "  Paracelsus  "  and  the  "  Bells  and 
Pomegranates"  poems  ;  while  in  Florence  in  1850  he  wrote 
"Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day,"  and  while  at  Paris,  in 
December,  1851,  his  essay  on  Shelley,  in  which  he  justifies 


BROWNING  667 

that  poet's  life  and  character  as  he  saw  them  then  ;  this  essay 
was  largely  based  on  twenty-five  supposed  letters  of  Shelley, 
soon  afterward  discovered  to  be  spurious. 

In  the  summer  of  1852  the  Brownings  return  to  London, 
and  lodge  at  58  Welbeck  Street;  about  this  time  the  poet  first 
comes  into  close  relations  with  D.  G.  Rossetti,  who  had  long 
been  an  admirer  of  his  poetry  ;  during  the  winter  of  1852-53 
the  Brownings  are  again  at  Florence  in  Casa  Guidi,  and  there, 
early  in  1853,  they  are  rejoiced  by  the  news  that  "  Colombe's 
Birthday"  has  been  successfully  produced  in  London;  the 
summer  of  1853  is  passed  at  Lucca,  where  they  meet  Story, 
the  American  sculptor  and  poet,  between  whose  family  and 
themselves  an  intimate  friendship  exists  thereafter ;  while  at 
Lucca  during  this  summer  Browning  writes  "  In  a  Balcony," 
"  By  the  Fireside,"  and  some  of  the  "  Men  and  Women;  " 
he  also  entertains  Lord  Lytton  there  for  a  fortnight ;  in  the 
autumn  of  1853  the  Brownings  make  their  first  visit  to  Rome, 
where  they  lodge  at  43  Via  Bocca  di  Leone,  in  rooms  secured 
for  them  by  the  Storys ;  at  Rome  they  meet  Fanny  Kernble, 
Thackeray,  Mrs.  Sartoris,  and  Lockhart,  and  Browning's 
portrait  is  painted  by  Fisher;  they  leave  Rome  early  in  the 
spring  of  1854,  on  account  of  the  ill  health  of  their  child,  and 
return  to  Florence  ;  they  seem  to  have  remained  in  Florence 
till  the  spring  or  early  summer  of  1855,  when  they  returned 
again  to  London,  taking  rooms  at  13  Dorset  Street,  Poland 
Square;  at  these  rooms,  on  the  27th  of  September,  1855, 
Tennyson  reads  his  new  poem  "  Maud  "  to  Mrs.  Browning, 
while  Rossetti,  the  only  other  listener,  makes  his  now  famous 
pen-and-ink  drawing  of  Tennyson  ;  in  1855  Rossetti  painted 
Browning's  portrait ;  during  this  summer  the  Brownings  visit 
Ruskin  at  Denmark  Hill,  and  see  his  Turner  pictures ;  at 
these  London  rooms,  in  September,  1854,  Browning  writes 
"One  Word  More  "  and  perhaps  some  of  the  fifty  poems 
called  "  Men  and  Women,"  which  he  published  in  two  vol- 
umes late  in  1855  ;  he  goes,  with  his  family,  to  Paris  again 


668  BROWNING 

for  the  winter  of  1855-56  ;  his  sister  goes  with  them,  and  they 
all  see  much  of  Lady  Elgin  during  the  winter  ;  during  this 
winter  Mrs.  Browning  wrote  "  Aurora  Leigh,"  scribbling  the 
verses  on  scraps  of  paper  wherever  she  happened  to  be,  and 
hiding  them  in  the  folds  of  her  dress  if  she  was  interrupted. 

On  the  death  of  their  mutual  friend  Kenyon,  in  December, 
1856,  the  Brownings  received  from  his  estate,  jointly,  10,- 
ooo  guineas,  though  they  received  nothing  from  the  estate  of 
Mrs.  Browning's  father,  who  died  about  the  same  time  ;  dur- 
ing 1857  Mrs.  Browning  begins  her  regular  correspondence 
with  her  husband's  sister,  which  has  since  become  so  valuable 
as  biographical  material  because  of  the  destruction  of  Brown- 
ing's own  letters  ;  the  winter  of  1856-57  seems  to  have  been 
passed  at  Rome  and  the  following  summer  again  at  the  Baths 
of  Lucca,  in  company  with  Lytton  ;  about  this  time  arose  the 
well-known  difference  between  Browning  and  his  wife  in  refer- 
ence to  spiritualism— a  kindly  disagreement,  which  gave  rise, 
eventually,  to  his  poem,  "Sludge,  the  Medium;"  in  the 
summer  of  1858  they  are  at  Havre  with  Browning's  sister  and 
father  ;  during  the  winter  and  spring  following  they  seem  to 
have  been  at  Florence  and  Rome;  in  July,  1859,  they  are  at 
or  near  S^ena,  where  the  Storysare  their  neighbors,  and  where 
Browning  becomes  a  kind  of  guardian  to  Walter  Savage  Lan- 
dor,  who  had  found  life  with  his  family  at  Fiesole  "  unendur- 
able;  "  Lander's  friends  in  England  send  to  Browning,  annu- 
ally thereafter,  enough  to  support  the  old  "  lion,"  and  he  is 
placed  in  apartments  next  door  to  the  Casa  Guidi  home  in 
Florence,  in  a  house  kept  by  two  former  servants  of  the  Brown- 
ings, who  had  married  and  established  themselves  there  ;  about 
this  time  the  poet  forms  a  close  friendship  with  Leighton,  the 
artist;  the  Brownings  spend  the  winter  of  1859-60  in  Rome, 
where  he  gives  much  time  to  modelling  in  clay;  both  he  and 
his  wife  are  much  affected  at  this  period  by  the  indifference 
of  the  English  public  to  his  poetry,  while  they  are  encouraged 
by  the  appreciation  shown  in  America ;  during  the  winter  of 


BROWNING  669 

1859-60  he  obtains,  through  the  aid  of  two  artist  friends,  a 
close  insight  into  the  popular  and  picturesque  aspects  of  Roman 
life,  and  comes  much  under  the  influence  of  the  Storys  ;  dur- 
ing this  winter  in  Rome  he  also  dines,  by  invitation,  with  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  and  meets  Cardinal  Manning  ;  the  Brown- 
ings are  again  at  Siena  during  the  summer  of  1860  and  at 
Rome  during  the  following  autumn  ;  while  in  Rome  at  this 
time  Mrs.  Browning's  health  is  seriously  affected  by  the  sudden 
death  of  her  sister,  especially  as  telegrams  concerning  her  sis- 
ter's illness  had  been  intercepted  by  the  Government  because 
the  poets  were  suspected  of  liberal  tendencies  ;  they  return  to 
Florence  late  in  1861,  and  Mrs.  Browning  dies  there  suddenly 
and  painlessly  on  June  2Qth  of  that  year  ;  she  had  been  suffer- 
ing from  a  slight  pulmonary  weakness,  but  her  death  seems  to 
have  been  directly  due  to  the  shock  caused  by  the  death  of 
Cavour,  whom  she  almost  worshipped  as  the  redeemer  of  Italy; 
Browning  is  greatly  aided  at  this  time  of  trial  by  Miss  Isa 
Blagden,  herself  an  author  of  some  note,  whose  beautiful 
home  in  Florence  was  long  the  centre  of  English  society  there  ; 
he  spends  at  her  home  the  month  following  his  wife's  death, 
and  then  decides  permanently  to  abandon  "housekeeping," 
saying,  "  My  root  is  taken  ;  "  late  in  July,  1861,  accompanied 
by  Miss  Blagden  and  his  son,  he  leaves  Florence  for  Paris, 
where  he  resides  for  a  while  at  1 5 1  rue  de  Grenelle  St.  Ger- 
main ;  he  then  spends  two  months  at  St.  Enogat,  near  Dinard, 
with  his  father  and  sister ;  thence  he  goes  to  London,  where, 
after  a  few  months  of  boarding,  he  decides  that  the  son  must 
have  a  home,  and  so  sends  to  Florence  for  his  furniture,  and 
establishes  himself  at  a  house  in  Warwick  Crescent,  near  the 
home  of  his  wife's  sister  ;  he  dislikes  London  intensely  at  first, 
and  remains  there  only  for  his  son's  sake,  always  hoping  event- 
ually to  return  to  Italy,  where  he  wished  to  spend  his  last 
days  ;  at  this  period  he  passes  his  evenings  with  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's sister,  a  philanthropist,  for  whom  he  writes  his  poem 
"  The  Twins  "  (republished  in  1855  in  «  Men  and  Women  "), 


6/0  BROWNING 

to  be  used  in  her  "  Plea  for  the  Ragged  Schools  of  London  ;  " 
he  spends  the  summer  of  1862  at  Cambo  and  Biarritz,  among 
the  Pyrenees,  where  he  has,  as  he  says,  ' '  a  great  read  at  Eu- 
ripides, the  only  book  I  brought  with  me,"  and  where  he 
plans  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  besides  writing  parts  of 
"  Dramatis  Persona  "  and  "  In  a  Balcony;  "  at  this  time  he 
indignantly  repulses  several  propositions  by  people  who  wish 
to  write  biographies  of  Mrs.  Browning,  and  even  threatens 
legal  proceedings  to  prevent  them  from  publishing  her  letters ; 
during  1863  Browning  publishes  a  three-volume  edition  of  his 
works,  including  "  Sordello  "  but  omitting  "Pauline;"  in 
November,  1862,  B.  W.  Procter  and  John  Forster  had  pub- 
lished a  volume  of  selections  from  his  poems  as  a  tribute  from 
"  two  friends,"  in  the  preface  of  which  they  referred  to  him 
as  "  among  the  few  great  poets  of  the  century  ;  "  Browning 
repays  his  .poet-friend  Procter,  during  Procter's  old  age  and 
complete  deafness,  by  visiting  him  weekly  with  his  son;  Brown- 
ing spends rthe  summers  of  1864  and  1865  at  St.  Marie,  near 
Pornic  in  illrittany ;  his  window  at  his  Pornic  lodgings  be- 
comes "  tl  doorway  "  of  the  poem  "James  Lee's  Wife;  " 
on  the  evening  of  February  12,  1864,  he  meets  Tennyson, 
Gladstone,  and  several  other  eminent  men  at  a  dinner  party 
given  by  Francis  Palgrave  in  his  home  in  Regent's  Park  ;  dur- 
ing this  evening  Browning  signs  his  will,  making  Tennyson 
and  Palgrave  witnesses  to  that  instrument ;  about  this  time, 
speaking  of  the  neglect  of  himself  and  his  works  by  the  Eng- 
lish public  for  the  previous  twenty-five  years,  Browning  writes 
to  a  friend:  "As  I  begun,  so  I  shall  end — taking  my  own 
course,  pleasing  myself,  or  aiming  at  doing  so,  and  thereby,  I 
hope,  pleasing  God.  ...  I  never  did  otherwise  ;  I  never 
had  any  fear  as  to  what  I  did  going  utterly  to  the  bad — hence, 
in  collected  editions,  I  always  repeated  everything,  smallest 
and  greatest;"  during  the  winter  of  1866  he  again  meets 
Carlyle ;  after  the  death  of  Browning's  father,  on  June  14, 
1866,  the  poet's  sister  becomes  a  member  of  his  household 


BROWNING  671 

and  his  inseparable  companion  ;  they  spend  the  summer  of 
1866  at  St.  Malo  and  LeCroisic,  the  scene  of  "Herve  Kiel ; " 
in  June,  1867,  Oxford  confers  on  Browning  the  degree  of 
A.M.  ("  hardly  given  since  Dr.  Johnson's  time,  except  to  kings 
and  royal  personages")  and  in  the  following  December  he 
is  made  an  honorary  fellow  of  Balliol  College  ;  in  1873,  when 
the  lord  rectorship  of  St.  Andrew's  University  becomes  vacant 
by  the  death  of  J.  S.  Mill,  it  is  tendered  to  Browning,  but 
he  declines  the  honor  ;  he  spends  the  summer  of  1867  again 
at  Le  Croisic  ;  in  the  summer  of  1868,  after  visiting  several 
French  watering-places,  he  settles,  with  his  family,  at  Au- 
dierne  near  Finisterre  in  Brittany. 

In  the  autumn  of  1868  Smith  &  Elder  publish  a'six-volume 
edition  of  his  works  and  in  the  following  winter  the  first  two 
volumes  of  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book  " — a  poem  that  Brown- 
ing always  speaks  of  in  his  letters  as  "  my  murder  poem  ;  "  in 
the  spring  of  1869  the  third  and  fourth  volumes  of  "The 
Ring  and  the  Book ' '  appear,  and  at  last  Browning  comes 
into  his  own,  and  is  fully  recognized  by  the  EngJsh  public ; 
the  Athenaum  called  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book  '  "  the  most 
precious  and  profound  spiritual  treasure  that  EngUnd  has  pro- 
duced since  the  days  of  Shakespeare  ;  "  the  main  story  of  the 
poem  is  founded  on  fact ;  Browning  found  the  tale  in  an  old 
manuscript  in  a  bookstall  at  Florence  shortly  before  his  wife's 
death,  and  read  it  carefully  eight  times  before  putting  the  story 
into  verse  ;  he  worked  on  the  poem  from  1864  to  1869  ;  Pom- 
pilia,  in  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  reflects  in  many  ways 
the  character  of  Mrs.  Browning  ;  from  1869  to  1871  Brown- 
ing publishes  nothing  ;  in  April,  1870,  he  writes  the  sonnet 
"  Helen's  Tower,"  in  memory  of  Lord  Dufferin's  mother — 
a  poem  published  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  1883  ;  in  the 
summer  of  1869,  with  his  sister  and  his  son,  he  joins  the  Storys 
in  a  tour  through  Scotland;  the  summer  of  1870  finds  them 
again  in  a  fishing  village  of  Brittany — St.  Aubin,  whence  the 
exigencies  of  the  Franco-Prussian  War  soon  compel  them  to  re- 


6/2  BROWNING 

turn  hastily,  taking  a  cattle-boat  by  night  from  Honfleur ;  in 
March,  1871,  Browning  writes  "  Herve  Riel,"  and  sells  it  to 
the  Cornhill  Magazine  for  100  guineas  for  the  benefit  of  the 
French  sufferers  in  the  war ;  in  proposing  this  sale,  he  writes 
to  his  publishers  concerning  "  Herve  Riel,"  "I  like  it  better 
than  most  things  I  have  done  of  late;  "  in  August,  1871,  he 
publishes  "  Balaustion's  Adventure,"  and  in  the  December 
following  "Prince  Hohenstiel  Schwangau,"  which  had  been 
written  in  Scotland;  fourteen  hundred  copies  of  "Prince 
Hohenstiel  Schwangau  "  were  sold  within  five  days  after  pub- 
lication and  before  any  review  of  the  poem  had  appeared  ; 
twenty-five  hundred  copies  of  "  Balaustion's  Adventure  "  were 
sold  within  the  first  five  months. 

In  the  spring  of  1872  Browning  publishes,  with  some  mis- 
givings, "  Fifine  at  the  Fair  " — a  poem  which  his  biographer 
later  calls  "a  piece  of  perplexing  cynicism,  .  .  .  froth 
thrown  up  by  Browning's  poetic  imagination  during  the 
prolonged  simmering  which  was  to  leave  it  clearer;  "  there 
seems  to  be  no  ground  for  attributing  to  Browning  the  senti- 
ments ascribed  to  the  hero  in  "  Fifine  at  the  Fair  ;  "  his  real 
attitude  toward  questions  of  this  kind  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  he  withdrew  the  admiration  of  forty  years  from  Shelley 
when  he  learned  that  that  poet  had  been  heartless  toward  his 
first  wife. 

While  at  St.  Aubin  again,  in  the  summer  of  1872,  Brown- 
ing meets  Anne  Thackeray  Ritchie,  who  suggests  to  him  a 
title  for  the  poem  for  which  he  was  then  gathering  materials — 
'*  The  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country  ;  "  he  began  this  poem 
late  in  the  winter  of  1872,  and  finished  it  in  the  early  autumn 
of  1873,  just  before  going  again  to  St.  Aubin  ;  for  a  time  be- 
tween 1870  and  1880  he  enters  into  "  the  fashionable  routine 
of  country-house  visiting,"  but  he  is  most  interested  in  the 
musical  art,  attending  "  every  important  concert  of  the  Lon- 
don season"  and  sacrificing  all  other  engagements  to  these; 
his  frequent  companion  on  these  occasions  was  Mrs.  Egerton- 


BROWNING  6/3 

Smith,  the  "  A.  E.  S."  of  the  poem  "  La  Saiziaz"  an  ac- 
complished musician,  whom  he  had  known  in  Italy  ;  with 
her  death,  in  1877,  he  ceased  to  pay  attention  to  music;  in 
the  summer  of  1874,  at  the  suggestion  of  Mrs.  Smith,  the 
Brownings  unite  with  her  in  a  joint  housekeeping  scheme  at 
Mers  near  Freport  on  the  French  coast ;  they  follow  the  same 
plan  in  1875  at  Villers,  in  1876  at  the  Isle  of  Arran,  and  in 
1877  at  a  house  called  "  La  Saiziaz,"  near  Geneva. 

During  the  autumn  of  1874  Browning  works  on  "  Aris- 
tophanes' Apology,"  writing  at  Mers  and  "living  with  the 
great  Greek  ;  "  it  is  a  strange  fact  that,  with  all  his  success 
in  revealing  the  spirit  of  Aristophanes  and  Euripides,  he  uni- 
formly refused  to  regard  the  great  Greek  writers  as  models  of 
literary  style  ;  while  at  Villers,  in  1875,  he  corrects  the  proofs 
of  "  The  Inn  Album,"  which  is  published  in  the  following 
November  ;  in  the  autumn  of  1876  he  has  completed  "  Pac- 
chiarotto  ;  "  during  his  later  years  he  makes  few  visits  except 
to  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  where  he  occasionally  sojourned,  es- 
pecially at  Balliol  College,  till  the  end  of  his  life  ;  at  Oxford 
he  comes  into  close  touch  with  Jowett,  Lord  Coleridge,  and 
Matthew  Arnold  ;  in  1875  he  is  unanimously  nominated  lord 
rector  of  the  University  of  Glasgow,  and  in  1877  he  is  again 
tendered  the  lord  rectorship  of  St.  Andrews,  but  he  declines 
both  honors,  perhaps  because  he  was  never  inclined  to  public 
speaking  ;  while  at  La  Saiziaz,  in  August,  1877,  he  is  greatly 
shocked  by  the  sudden  death  of  Mrs.  Smith — "  a  moral  thun- 
derbolt " — and  the  experience  finds  expression  in  the  poem 
"  La  Saiziaz"  written  soon  afterward  and  published  in  the 
summer  of  1878  with  "  Two  Poets  of  the  Croisic  ;  "  this 
poem  best  expresses  Browning's  "hope  of  immortality;" 
the  events  in  "Two  Poets  of  the  Croisic"  are  strictly  his- 
torical. 

In  August,  1878,  Browning  and  his  sister  start  on  their 
long-contemplated  visit  to  Italy  ;  they  go  by  way  of  the 
Spliigen,  and  spend  some  time  at  a  hotel  near  the  summit, 
43 


6/4  BROWNING 

where  he  works  with  unusual  rapidity,  writing  "  Ivan  Ivano- 
vitch  "  and  several  other  of  his  "  Dramatic  Idylls;  "  they 
go  thence  to  Asolo,  stopping  briefly  at  Como  and  Verona  ; 
after  a  month  at  Asolo  they  go  to  Venice,  where  they  take 
lodgings  in  the  Albergo  del  Universe,  or  Palazzo  Brandolin- 
Rota  on  the  shady  side  of  the  Grand  Canal — a  house  that  be- 
came their  annual  autumn  resting-place  for  seven  years  there- 
after ;  the  autumns  of  1881  and  1882  are  spent  at  Saint  Pierre 
la  Chartreuse  and  those  of  1883  and  1885  at  Grissoney  Saint 
Jean  ;  in  the  autumn  of  1880  Mrs.  Arthur  Bronson,  an  Amer- 
ican friend  of  the  Brownings,  places  at  their  disposal  a  suite 
of  rooms  in  the  Palazzo  Giustiniani  Recanati,  which  formed 
a  supplement  to  her  own  house ;  they  keep  house  here  again 
in  1885  ;  in  1888  Mrs.  Bronson  gives  to  them  apartments  in 
her  own  house — a  service  commemorated  by  Browning  in  the 
preface  to  "  Asolando ;  "  in  the  salon  of  Mrs.  Bronson  the 
Brownings  frequently  meet  Don  Carlos  and  his  family,  Prince 
and  Princess  Iturbide,  the  Princess  of  Montenegro,  Prince  and 
Princess  Metternich,  Sir  Henry  and  Lady  Layard,  and  other 
persons  of  note ;  in  1879  Browning  publishes  his  "Dramatic 
Lyrics,"  which  are  received  "  with  a  thrill  of  suppressed  ad- 
miration ;  "  this  volume  included  "  Earth's  Immortalities," 
"  The  Boy  and  the  Angel,"  "  Meeting  at  Night,"  "  Parting 
at  Morning,"  "  Saul,"  and  "  Time's  Revenges  ;"  in  1880 
he  publishes  a  second  series  of  selections  from  his  works. 

In  the  summer  of  1881  Dr.  (then  Mr.)  Furnival  and  Miss 
Hickey  organize  the  London  Browning  Society,  with  the 
poet's  knowledge  but  without  approval  or  encouragement  from 
him  ;  he  had  himself  long  been  president  of  the  Shakespeare 
Society  and  a  member  of  the  Wordsworth  Society  ;  in  No- 
vember, 1883,  he  writes  his  sonnet  to  Goldoni,  actually  scrib- 
bling it  off  while  a  messenger  is  waiting  for  it;  in  1884  he 
again  declines  an  invitation  for  the  lord  rectorship  of  St.  An- 
drew's, receives  the  degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  University  of 
Edinburgh,  and  is  made  honorary  president  of  the  Associated 


BROWNING  675 

Societies  of  Edinburgh  ;  in  1884  he  writes  the  sonnets  "  The 
Founder  of  the  Feast"  and  "The  Names"  and  in  1886 
"  Why  I  am  a  Liberal  ;  "  in  1885  his  son  visits  Italy  for  the 
first  time  since  his  mother's  death,  and  is  so  charmed,  as  an 
artist,  with  Venice  that  Browning  decides  to  buy  a  home  and 
settle  there  permanently  ;  he  bargains  for  the  Palazzo  Man- 
zoni  on  the  Grand  Canal,  but  the  contract  is  broken  by  friends 
of  the  original  owner  ;  at  this  time  Browning  writes  :  "  I  my- 
self shall  stick  to  London,  which  has  been  so  eminently  good 
and  gracious  to  me,  so  long  as  God  permits;  only,  when  the  in- 
evitable outrage  of  Time  gets  the  better  of  my  body  (I  shall  not 
believe  in  his  reaching  my  soul  and  proper  self),  there  will  be 
a  capital  retreat  provided;  "  not  long  afterward  his  son  buys 
for  the  family  the  Rezzonico  Palazzo,  and  so  the  "  retreat"  is 
provided;  the  Brownings  spend  the  summer  of  1884  at  St. 
Moritz  at  the  villa  of  an  American  friend,  Mrs.  Bloomfield 
Moore  ;  in  1886,  owing  to  the  feeble  health  of  Miss  Brown- 
ing, they  go  only  as  far  as  Llangollen,  in  Wales,  where  the 
poet  varies  his  usual  London  custom  by  attending  regularly 
the  Sunday  afternoon  service  in  the  little  parish  church  ;  a 
memorial  tablet  has  since  been  placed  on  the  spot  where  he 
worshipped  ;  the  death  of  Browning's  most  intimate  friend, 
Joseph  Milsand,  in  1888,  and  the  successive  demise,  about  this 
time,  of  Miss  Haworth,  Dickens,  Procter,  John  Forster,  Car- 
lyle,  Lord  Houghton,  and  others  deeply  affects  him ;  he 
greatly  reverenced  Carlyle,  often  visited  him  during  his  last 
days  at  Chelsea,  and  after  his  death  defended  him  vigorously 
against  the  charge  of  unkindness  to  his  wife  ;  in  the  spring  of 
1886  Browning  is  made  Corresponding  Secretary  of  the  Royal 
Academy,  and  early  in  1887  he  publishes  "  Parleyings  with 
Certain  Poets;  "  in  June,  1887,  he  removes  from  Warwick 
Crescent  to  De  Vere  Gardens  to  a  house  more  sheltered,  more 
conveniently  situated,  and  more  modern  in  construction  than 
his  former  residence ;  here  his  son  is  married  in  December, 
1887,  to  a  New  York  lady,  and  here  in  the  large  rooms  the 


676  BROWNING 

poet  arranges  the  fine  specimens  of  antique  furniture  that  he 
had  been  gathering  for  years. 

In  the  summer  of  1887,  with  his  sister,  he  is  again  the  guest 
of  Mrs.  Moore  at  St.  Moritz  ;  one  of  his  last  occupations  during 
his  last  winter  in  London  was  his  arrangement  of  his  father's 
library  of  6,000  volumes  and  his  own  library  in  the  new  cases 
at  the  new  home  ;  he  still  continues  to  dine  out,  to  visit 
every  art  exhibition,  and  to  answer  all  correspondents,  writing 
daily  till  his  fingers  ache;  in  December,  1887,  he  writes 
"  Rosny,"  "  Beatrice  Signori,"  "  Flute  Music,"  and  two  or 
three  of  the  "  Bad  Dreams;  "  in  1888  he  begins  revising  his 
poems  for  the  last  and  now  complete  edition,  the  last  volume 
of  which  was  not  published  till  1889  ;  the  greatest  change 
made  in  any  poem  at  this  time  was  in  "  Pauline,"  which  he 
then  calls  "  the  only  poem  which  makes  me  out  youngish ;  " 
in  August,  1888,  he  joins  his  son  at  Priziero,  near  Feltre,  in 
Italy — a  place  that  he  calls  "  the  most  beautiful  that  I  was 
ever  resident  in  ;  "  soon  afterward  they  all  go  to  the  palace 
home  in  Venice,  which  the  son  had  fitted  up  in  excellent 
style ;  before  and  during  this  journey  to  Italy  Browning  was 
seriously  ill,  but  he  recovered  before  reaching  Venice ;  he  re- 
turns to  London  late  in  the  autumn  of  1888,  and  makes  his  an- 
nual visit  to  Oxford  ;  in  August,  1889,  he  starts  on  his  last  trip 
to  Venice,  stopping  for  several  weeks  at  Asolo,  as  the  guest 
again  of  his  American  friend,  Mrs.  Bronson  ;  before  leaving 
Asolo  he  enters  into  negotiations  for  the  purchase  of  a  piece 
of  land  belonging  to  the  old  castle,  where  he  proposes  to 
build  a  summer  home  to  be  christened  "  Pippa  Passes  ;  "  the 
negotiations  are  delayed  by  political  considerations,  and  are 
completed  only  on  the  day  of  the  poet's  death  ;  he  reaches 
Venice  late  in  October ;  early  in  November  he  takes  a  severe 
cold  while  taking  his  daily  walk  on  the  Lido  ;  he  dies  at  the 
Rezzonico  Palazzo,  December  12,  1889  ;  at  the  suggestion  of 
the  Dean  of  Westminster,  the  poet's  body  is  sent  for  inter- 
ment in  Westminster  Abbey,  though  not  till  after  a  very  im- 


BROWNING  677 

posing  funeral  service  conducted  by  the  city  of  Venice  ;  later, 
a  bronze  tablet  was  placed  by  that  city  in  the  palace  where 
Browning  died  ;  besides  the  name  and  date  of  birth  and  death, 
this  tablet  bears  these  lines  from  one  of  his  poems  : 

"  Open  my  heart,  and  you  will  see 
Graved  inside  of  it,  *  Italy.'" 

The  city  of  Florence  also  marked  with  a  tablet  the  house 
where  the  Brownings  lived  during  their  residence  in  that 
city  ;  "  Asolando  "  was  published  on  the  day  of  Browning's 
death. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   CRITICISM   ON   BROWNING. 

Hutton,    R.    H.,     "  Literary     Essays."     London,     1888,     Macmillan, 

188-240. 
Dowden,  E.,  "Transcripts  and  Studies."     London,  1888,  Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  474-525. 
Bagehot,    W.,    "Works."     Hartford,   1889,   Traveller's  Insurance  Co., 

238-253. 

Stedman,  E.  C.,  "Victorian  Poets."     Boston,  1876,  Osgood,  293-342. 
Mabie,  H.  W.,  "  Essays  in  Literary  Interpretation."     New  York,  1892, 

Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  99-137  and  191-239. 
Dowden,    E.,    "Studies  in  Literature."     London,  1878,  Kegan  Paul  & 

Co.,  191-259. 
Saintsbury,    G.,    "Corrected   Impressions."     New  York,    1895,  Dodd, 

Mead  &  Co.,  98-116. 

Masson,  D.,  "  In  the  Footsteps  of  the  Poets."    New  York,  1893,  Whit- 
taker,  297-329. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicta."    New  York,  1887,  Scribner,  55-95. 
Ritchie,  A.  T.,  "  Records  of  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  and  Browning."     New 

York,  1892,  Harper,  129-190. 
Corson,  H.,  "  Introduction  to  Browning."     Boston,  1886,  D.  C.  Heath 

&Co. 
Fawcett,  E.,  "  Agnosticism  and  Other  Essays."    Chicago,  1889,  Belford, 

Clark  &  Co.,  106-147. 
MacDonald,   G. ,  "  The  Imagination  and  Other  Essays."    Boston,  1883, 

Lothrop,  195-217. 
McCrie,  G.,  "The  Religion  of  Our  Literature."     London,  1875,  Hodder 

&  Stoughton,  69-109. 


678  BROWNING 

Berdoe,    E.,    "  Browning's  Message  to  His  Time."     New  York,  1891, 

Macmillan,  v.  index. 
Burt,   M.    E.,    "Browning's  Women."     Chicago,    1897,   C.  H.  Kerr  & 

Co.,  v.  index. 
Cooke,    G.   W.,    "  A  Guide-Book  to  the  Poetry  of  Browning."     Boston, 

1891,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  v.  index. 

Sharp,  W.,  "Life  of  Robert  Browning."  London,  1890,  Walter  Scott. 
Devey,  J.,  "Modern  English  Poets."  London,  1873,  Moxon,  376-421. 
James,  H.,  "Essays  in  London."  New  York,  1893,  Harper,  222-229. 
Wilson,  F.  M.,  "A  Primer  on  Browning."  London,  1891,  Macmillan. 
Wescott,  B.  F.,  "  Essays  in  the  History  of  Religious  Thought."  London, 

1891,  Macmillan,  253-276. 
Revell,  W.  F. ,  "  Browning's  Criticism  of  Life."    London,  1892,  Swan, 

Sonnenschein  &  Co.,  v.  index. 
Jones,  H.,  "  Browning  as  a  Philosophical  and  Religious  Teacher. "    New 

York,  1891,  Macmillan,  v.  index. 
Woodberry,  G.  E.,  "Studies  in  Literature  and  Life."    New  York,  1891, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. ,  276-296. 
Cooke,  G.  W.,    "Poets  and  Problems."     Boston,  1886,  Ticknor  &  Co., 

271-388. 
Burroughs,  J.,  "Indoor  Studies."    Boston,  1893,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  239. 
Alexander,  W.  J.,  "  Introduction  to  the  Poetry  of  Browning."    Boston, 

1889,  Ginn. 
Orr,  Mrs.  S.,    "Life  and  Letters  of  Robert  Browning."     New  York, 

1891,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  v.  index. 
Kingsland,  W.  G.,  "  Robert  Browning."   London,  1890,  F.  W.  Jarvis  & 

Son,  v.  index. 
Friswell,  J.  H.,    "  Modern  Men  of  Letters."    London,  1870,  Hodder  & 

Stoughton,  119-131. 
Howitt,  Wm.,    "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,  1863, 

Routledge. 
Dawson,  W.  J.,   "  The  Makers  of  Modern  English."    New  York,  1891, 

Whittaker,  270-327. 
Thome,  W.    H.,    "Modern    Idols."     Philadelphia,    1887,    Lippincott, 

21-48. 

Mather,  J.  M.,  "  Popular  Studies,  etc."  London,  1892,  Warne,  155-184. 
Morley,  J,  "Studies  in  Literature."  London,  1891,  Macmillan,  255- 

286. 
Oliphant,  Mrs.,  "  The  Victorian  Age  of  English  Literature."    New  York, 

n.  d.,  Tait,  I  :  218-226. 
Harpers  Magazine,  84:  832-855  (A.  T.  Ritchie). 


BROWNING  6/9 

Poet  Lore,    8:78-84    and    225-233    (W.    G.    Kingsland);     5:258-266 

(W.J.  Rolfe). 

Century,  23  :  238-245  (S.  A.  Brooke)  ;   23  :  189  (E.  Gosse). 
Poet  Lore,   6:  225-238  (G.  W.  Cooke) ;   479-490  (W.   G.   Kingsland); 

2:  19-26  (H.  S.  Pancoast);  6:  585-592  (L.  A.  Sherman);   4:  612- 

616  (G.    W.    Cooke);    1:553-560  (H.    S.    Pancoast). 
Contemporary  Review,  57  :  141-152  (S.  A.  Brooke);   35  :  289-302  (Mrs. 

S.    Orr);  60:  70-81    (A.  Lang). 

Critic,  15  :  316-318  and  330  (R.  H.  Stoddard) ;    13  :  93  (A.  S.  Cook). 
Andover  Review,  8  :  131-153  (H.  W.  Mabie). 
Nation,  53  :  92  (G.  E.  Woodberry) ;  22  :  49,  50  (H.  James,  Jr.). 
Literary  World  (Boston),   21  :  25,  26  and  13  :  76-78  (F.  J.  Furnivall). 
Academy,  39  :  247  (W.  J.  Rolfe)  ;  23  :  213,  214  (J.  A.  Symonds). 
Appleton's  Magazine,  6  :  533-536  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Fortnightly  Review,  16  :  478-490  (S.  Colvin) ;    u  :  331-343  (J.  Morley) ; 

I  :  548~55o(W.  J.  Courthope);   3  :  402-406  (B.  Taylor). 
Canadian  Monthly,   2  :  285-287  (Goldwin  Smith). 
North  American  Review,  66  :  357-400  (J.  R.  Lowell). 
Fraser's  Magazine,  76:  518-530  (E.  Dowden). 
Good  Words,  31  '87-93  (R-  H-  Button). 

PARTICULAR    CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Intense  Vigor. — "  His  genius  is  robust  with  vigor- 
ous blood,  and  his  tone  has  the  cheeriness  of  intellectual 
health.  .  .  .  His  poetry  is  a  tonic;  it  braces  and  invig- 
orates. .  .  .  The  supple,  nervous  strength  and  swiftness 
of  the  blank  verse  [in  "Bishop  Blougram's  Apology  "]  is,  in 
its  way,  as  fine  as  the  qualities  we  have  observed  in  the  other 
monologues:  there  is  a  splendid  'go'  in  it,  a  vast  capacity 
for  business;  the  verse  is  literally  alive  with  meaning  and 
packed  with  thought.  ...  *  The  Worst  of  It '  is  thrill- 
ingly  intense  and  alive ;  and  the  swift  force  and  tremulous 
eagerness  of  its  very  original  rhythm  and  metre  translate  its 
sense  into  sound  with  perfect  fitness.  .  .  .  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's style  is  vital;  his  verse  moves  to  the  throbbing  of 
an  inner  organism,  not  to  the  pulsations  of  a  machine." — 
John  Addington  Symonds. 

"He  is  always  masculine  and  vigorous.     Original  modern 


680  BROWNING 

poetry  is  apt  to  be  enervating,  producing  the  effect  of  intel- 
lectual luxury;  or  if,  like  Wordsworth's,  it  is  as  cool  and 
bright  as  morning  dew,  it  carries  us  away  from  the  world  to 
mountain  solitudes  and  transcendental  dreams.  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's—  while  it  strains  our  intellect  to  the  utmost,  as  all 
really  intellectual  poetry  must,  and  has  none  of  the  luxuriance 
of  fancy  and  wealth  of  sentiment  which  relaxes  the  fibre  of  the 
mind — keeps  us  still  in  a  living  world;  not  always  the  modern 
world,  very  seldom,  indeed,  the  world  of  modern  England, 
but  still  in  contact  with  keen,  quick,  vigorous  life." — R.  H. 
Button. 

"  It  is  somewhat  strange  that  a  poet  who  can,  upon  occasion, 
show  such  a  fine  feeling  for  rhythm  and  the  music  of  words, 
should  so  frequently  set  both  at  nought  in  preference  for  verses 
which  stun  the  ear  with  their  rudeness — never,  though,  without 
imparting  some  sense  of  admiration  for  the  vigor  of  the  blow." 
— Richard  Grant  White. 

1 '  What  enchants  is  the  speed,  the  glow,  the  distinctness, 
the  power  of  each  well-placed  touch." — Andrew  Lang. 

"The  chief  attraction  in  Mr.  Browning's  poems  is  to  be 
found  in  the  solid  and  vigorous  thinking  which  characterizes 
them  and  the  life  which  they  possess  and,  consequently,  can 
impart." — M.  D.  Conway. 

11  It  would  be  most  unjust,  however,  .  .  .to  pass  over 
the  dignity  and  splendor  of  the  verse  in  many  places,  where 
the  intensity  of  the  waiter's  mood  finds  worthy  embodiment  in 
a  sustained  gravity  and  vigor  and  finish  of  diction  not  to  be 
surpassed.  .  .  .  When  all  is  said  that  can  be  said  about 
the  violences  which  from  time  to  time  invade  the  poem,  it 
remains  true  that  the  complete  work  affects  the  reader  most 
powerfully  with  that  wide  unity  of  impressions  which  it  is  the 
highest  aim  of  dramatic  art — and  perhaps  of  all  art — to  pro- 
duce."— John  Morley. 

"  The  old  fire  flashes  out,  thirty  years  after,  in  '  Herve 
Kiel,'  another  vigorous  production." — E.  C.  Stedman. 


BROWNING  68 1 

"  Mr.  Browning  had  plenty  to  say  on  whatsoever  subject  he 
took  up;  and  had  a  fresh,  original,  vigorous  manner  of  saying 
it." — George  Saint sbury. 

"Life  is  never  life  to  him  except  in  those  hours  when  it 
rises  to  a  complete  outpouring  of  itself.  To  live  is  to  experi- 
ence intensely.  .  .  .  The  singular  combination  of  great 
intellectual  range  with  passionate  intensity  of  utterance  which 
characterizes  Browning  is  explained  by  the  indissoluble  union 
in  which  he  holds  thought  and  action." — If.  W.  Mabie. 

"It  is  the  sea  in  its  glory,  the  storm  in  its  might,  the 
mountain  in  its  towering  splendor,  the  heavens  in  their  un- 
utterable depths,  which  made  the  style  of  Browning. 
His  poetry  is  like  the  strong  and  resistless  force  of  a  great  river 
carrying  on  its  bosom  mighty  ships  and  many  a  smaller  craft." 
—  G.  W.  Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Fear  death  ? — to  feel  the  fog  in  my  throat, 

The  mist  in  my  face, 
When  the  snows  begin  and  the  blasts  denote 

I  am  nearing  the  place, 
The  power  of  the  night  and  the  press  of  the  storm, 

The  post  of  the  foe  ; 

"  I  would  hate  that  death  bandaged  my  eyes,  and  forebore, 

And  bade  me  creep  past. 
No !  let  me  taste  the  whole  of  it,  fare  like  my  peers, 

The  heroes  of  old, 
Bear  the  brunt,  in  a  minute  pay  glad  life's  arrears 

Of  pain,  darkness,  and  cold." — Prospice. 

"  Blot  out  his  name,  then,  record  one  lost  soul  more, 
One  task  more  declined,  one  more  foot-path  untrod, 
One  more  devil's-triumph  and  sorrow  for  angels, 
One  wrong  more  to  man,  one  more  insult  to  God  ! 
Life's  night  begins  :  let  him  never  come  back  to  us ! 
There  would  be  doubt,  hesitation,  and  pain  ; 
Forced  praise  on  our  part — the  glimmer  of  twilight, 
Never  glad  confident  morning  again." — The  Lost  Leader. 


682  BROWNING 

"  It  is  a  He — their  priests,  their  Pope, 

Their  saints,  their     ...     all  they  fear  or  hope 

Are  lies  and  lies — there  !  thro'  my  door 

And  ceiling,  there  !  and  walls  and  floor, 

There,  lies,  they  lie,  shall  still  be  hurled, 

Till  spite  of  them  I  reach  the  world  ! 

No  part  in  aught  they  hope  or  fear  ! 

No  Heaven  with  them,  no  Hell, — and  here, 

No  Earth,  not  so  much  space  as  pens 

My  body  in  their  worst  of  dens 

But  shall  bear  God  and  Man  my  cry  : 

Lies — lies,  again — and  still,  they  lie  !  " 

—  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 

2.  Analysis  of  Character — Introspection.— "  This 
'  endeavor  is  not  to  set  men  in  action  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
them  move,  but  to  see  and  show,  in  their  action  and  inaction 
alike,  the  real  impulses  of  their  being ;  to  see  how  each  soul 
conceives  of  itself.  .  .  .  Suppose  he  is  attracted  by  some 
particular  soul  or  by  some  particular  act.  The  problem  oc- 
cupies him — the  more  abstruse  and  entangled  the  more  attrac- 
tive to  him  it  is;  he  winds  his  way  into  the  heart  of  it,  or, 
we  might  better  say,  he  picks  to  pieces  the  machinery. 
'  Colombe's  Birthday '  is  mainly  concerned  with  inward 
rather  than  outward  action  ;  in  this  the  characters  themselves, 
what  they  are  in  their  own  souls,  what  they  think  of  them- 
selves and  what  others  think  of  them,  constitute  the  chief  in- 
terest. .  .  .  It  is  a  result  of  this  purpose,  in  consonance 
with  this  practice,  that  we  get  in  Mr.  Browning's  works  so 
large  a  number  of  distinct  human  types  and  so  great  a  variety 
of  surroundings  in  which  they  are  placed.  Only  in  Shake- 
speare can  we  find  anything  like  the  same  variety  of  distinct 
human  characters — vital  creations  endowed  with  thoughtful 
life.  .  .  .  The  men  and  women  who  live  and  move  in 
that  new  world  of  his  creation  are  as  varied  as  life  itself;  they 
are  kings  and  beggars,  saints  and  lovers,  great  captains,  poets, 
painters,  musicians,  priests  and  popes,  Jews,  gypsies  and  der- 


BROWNING  683 

vishes,  street-girls,  princesses,  dancers  with  the  wicked  witch- 
ery of  the  daughter  of  Herodias,  wives  with  the  devotion  of 
the  wife  of  Brutus,  joyous  girls  and  malevolent  graybeards, 
statesmen,  cavaliers  and  soldiers  of  humanity,  tyrants  and 
bigots,  ancient  sages  and  modern  spiritualists,  heretics,  schol- 
ars, scoundrels,  devotees,  rabbis,  persons  of  quality  and  men 
of  low  estate — men  and  women  as  multiform  as  nature  and 
society  has  made  them."— -John  Addington  Symonds. 

"  His  mission  has  been  that  of  exploring  those  secret  regions 
which  generate  the  forces  whose  outward  phenomena  it  is  for 
the  playwrights  to  illustrate.  He  has  opened  a  new  field  for 
the  display  of  emotional  power,  founding,  so  to  speak,  a  sub- 
dramatic  school  of  poetry,  whose  office  is  to  follow  the  work- 
ings of  the  mind,  to  discover  the  impalpable  elements  of  which 
human  motives  and  passions  are  composed.  .  .  .  Brown- 
ing, as  the  poet  of  psychology,  escapes  to  that  stronghold 
whither,  as  I  have  said,  science  and  materialism  are  not  yet 
prepared  to  follow  him.  .  .  .  He  has  preferred  to  study 
human  hearts  rather  than  the  forms  of  nature.  .  .  .  Brown- 
ing was  the  prophet  of  that  reaction  which  holds  that  the 
proper  study  of  mankind  is  man.  His  effort,  weak  or  able, 
was  at  figure-painting  in  distinction  from  that  of  landscape  or 
still-life."—^.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Mr.  Browning  is  not  a  great  dramatist,  for  in  style  he 
always  remains  himself;  but  he  is  a  great  intellectual  inter- 
preter of  human  character.  .  .  .  He  does  enter  into 
character  as  a  prelude  to  the  excitement  of  conflict,  but  only 
describes  the  conflict  in  order  to  illustrate  the  character.  He 
has  the  command  of  motives  which  is  given  by  a  constant 
study  of  the  secrets  of  the  heart,  either  for  saintly  and  mys- 
tical or  for  worldly  and  selfish  reasons.  .  .In  the  brill- 
iancy of  his  descriptions  of  character  he  has  no  rival." — R. 
H.  Hutton. 

"  The  subtle  genius  of  a  poet  whose  mastery  of  psychology 
is  universally  recognized  has  marvelous  power  of  penetrating 


684  BROWNING 

the  secrets  of  natures  widely  dissimilar  and  of  experiences 
which  have  little  in  common  save  that  they  are  a  part  of  life. 
We  are  irresistibly  drawn  to  him,  not  only  because 
he  gives  us  his  view  of  things,  the  substance  of  his  personal 
life,  but  because  he  makes  ourselves  clear  and  comprehensible 
to  us.  ...  Only  those  who  have  carefully  studied  the 
works  ["Paracelsus,"  "  Sordello,"  etc.]  know  what  aston- 
ishing power  is  embodied  in  them,  what  marvelous  subtlety  of 
analysis,  what  masterly  grouping  and  interplay  of  motives." 
—H.  W.  Mabie. 

"We  must  look  to  the  play  itself  ["  Balaustion's  Advent- 
ure "]  for  an  illustration  of  his  .  .  .  facility,  to  which 
'  The  Ring  and  the  Book  '  gave  expression  on  so  monumental 
a  scale,  for  penetrating  to  the  springs  of  character ;  .  .  . 
and  the  use  of  '  Balaustion  '  is  to  add  to  the  outer  record  a 
coherent  and  comprehensible  version  of  the  inner  character 
and  motives." — Sidney  Colvin. 

"Mr.  Browning  has  interpreted  every  one  of  our  emo- 
tions, from  divine  love  to  human  friendship,  from  the  despair 
of  the  soul  to  the  depths  of  personal  hatred." — Andrew 
Lang. 

"  A  strong  individuality  often  limits  a  man,  but  Browning 
had  with  it  so  much  imagination  that  he  flung  himself — retain- 
ing still  his  distinctive  elements — into  a  multitude  of  other 
lives,  in  various  places,  and  at  various  times  in  history.  In 
each  of  these  he  conceives  himself,  imagines  all  the  fresh  cir- 
cumstances, all  the  new  scenery,  all  the  strange  passions  and 
knowledge  of  each  age  around  himself,  and  creates  himself 
afresh  as  modified  by  them.  It  is  always  Browning,  then,  who 
writes.  .  .  .  Browning  has  excelled  the  rest  in  character- 
making  and  in  the  multitude  and  variety  of  his  characters. 
Nevertheless,  Browning  always  turns  up  in  every  character. 
When  his  characters  are  men,  a  sudden  turn  confronts  us  in 
them  with  which  we  are  well  acquainted.  .  .  .  The 
women  are  more  built  up  by  intellectual  analysis  based  on 


BROWNING  685 

Browning's  own  emotion — that  is,  a  man's  specialized  emo- 
tion— than  created  at  a  single  jet." — Stopford Brooke. 

"  He  never  seems  to  be  telling  us  what  he  thinks  and  feels ; 
but  he  puts  before  us  some  man,  male  or  female,  whose  indi- 
viduality soon  becomes  as  clear  and  as  absolute  as  our  own. 
The  poet  does  not  appear  ;  indeed,  so  wholly  is  he  merged  in 
the  creature  of  his  own  will  that,  as  we  hear  that  creature 
speak,  his  creator  is,  for  the  time,  completely  forgotten." — 
Richard  Grant  White. 

"  ["  The  Ring  and  the  Book"  ]  is  a  great  psychological 
poem,  evidently  written  by  Mr.  Browning  for  the  purpose  of 
elucidating  the  mysteries  of  fact  and  nature  and  of  human  ac- 
tion. The  incidents  .  .  .  afford  the  fullest  scope  to  the 
poet  for  the  dissection  of  human  passions  and  the  removal  of 
the  veil  which  interposes  between  the  heart  of  man  and  the 
outer  world.  .  .  .  His  greatest  gift  [is]  that  of  the  ca- 
pacity to  read  human  nature.  ...  In  the  dramatic  fac- 
ulty and  power  of  psychological  analysis  his  superiority  over 
his  contemporaries  is  easily  perceived." — G.  B.  Smith. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  She  had 

A  heart — how  shall  I  say  ? — too  soon  made  glad, 
Too  easily  impressed  ;  she  liked  whate'er 
She  looked  on,  and  her  looks  went  everywhere. 
Sir,  't  was  all  one  !     My  favor  at  her  breast, 
The  dropping  of  the  daylight  in  the  West, 
The  bough  of  cherries  some  officious  fool 
Broke  in  the  orchard  for  her,  the  white  mule 
She  rode  with  'round  the  terrace — all  and  each 
Would  draw  from  her  alike  the  approving  speech, 
Or  blush,  at  least.     She  thanked  men — good !  but  thanked 
Somehow — I  do  not  know — as  if  she  ranked 
My  gift  of  a  nine-hundred-years-old  name 
With  anybody's  gift." — My  Last  Duchess. 


686  BROWNING 

"  He  took  such  cognizance  of  men  and  things ; 
If  any  beat  a  horse,  you  felt  he  saw  ; 
If  any  cursed  a  woman,  he  took  note  ; 
Yet  stared  at  nobody, — you  stared  at  him, 
And  found,  less  to  your  pleasure  than  surprise, 
He  seemed  to  know  you  and  expect  as  much." 

— How  it  Strikes  a  Contetiiporary. 

"  I  drew  them,  fat  and  lean  :  then,  folks  at  church, 
From  good  old  gossips  waiting  to  confess 
Their  cribs  of  barrel-droppings,  candle-ends, 
To  the  breathless  fellow  at  the  altar-foot, 
Fresh  from  his  murder,  safe  and  sitting  there 
With  the  little  children  round  him  in  a  row." 

— Fra  Lippo  Lippi. 

3.  Inversion  —  Obscurity  —  Chaotic  Sentence 
Structure. — "  A  more  completely  opaque  medium  than  the 
wording  either  of  his  own  thoughts  or  of  the  author's  thoughts 
about  him  [in  "  Sordello  "  ]  Talleyrand  himself  would 
have  failed  to  invent.  .  .  .  Mr.  Browning  rushes  upon 
you  with  a  sort  of  intellectual  douche,  half  stuns  you  with  the 
abruptness  of  the  shock,  repeats  the  application  from  a  multi- 
tude of  swift  various  jets  from  unexpected  points  of  the  com- 
pass, and  leaves  you  at  last  giddy,  and  wondering  where  you 
are;  but  with  a  vague  sense  that,  were  you  properly  prepared 
beforehand,  you  would  discern  a  real  unity  and  power  in  this 
intellectual  water-spout,  though  its  first  descent  only  drenched 
and  bewildered  your  imagination.  .  .  .  As  to  the  rela- 
tion of  the  whole  to  the  part,  Mr.  Browning's  poems  are  not 
so  organized  that  the  parts  give  you  any  high  gratification  till 
you  catch  a  view  of  the  whole.  .  .  .  The  wording  [of 
the  "  Soliloquy  of  the  Spanish  Cloister  "]  .  .  .  is  neither 
melodious  nor  even  very  lucid  for  its  purpose  ;  and  the  parts 
.  are  diminished  images  of  the  whole,  and  hence  enig- 
matic until  the  whole  has  been  two  or  three  times  read. 
The  obscurity  wherein  Browning  disguises  his  realism 


BROWNING  687 

is  but  the  semblance  of  imagination  ;  a  mist  through  which 
rugged  details  jut  out,  while  the  central  truth  is  feebly  to  be 
seen.  .  .  .  Where  else  is  there  in  Browning,  for  what 
comes  near  lyric  fire,  anything  like  that  apostrophe  which 
ends  the  prologue  to  '  The  Ring  and  the  Book/  the  first  coup- 
let of  which  has  more  of  the  ring  of  inspiration  than  anything 
else  in  the  whole  range  of  his  poems,  though  in  the  closing 
lines  he  repasses  into  that  over-compressed  thought  which 
makes  him  at  times  so  obscure." — ft.  H.  Hutton. 

"One  half  of  '  Bordello  ' — and  that,  with  Mr.  Browning's 
usual  ill-luck,  the  first  half — is  undoubtedly  obscure.  It  is  as 
difficult  to  read  as  '  Endymion  '  or  the  '  Revolt  of  Islam,'  and 
for  the  same  reason  :  the  author's  lack  of  experience  in  the 
art  of  composition." — Augustine  Birr  ell. 

"  We  come  to  no  places  in  '  Sordello  '  where  we  can  rest 
and  dream  or  look  up  at  the  sky.  Ideas,  emotions,  images, 
analyses,  descriptions,  still  come  crowding  in.  There  is  too 
much  of  everything  ;  we  cannot  see  the  wood  for  the  trees. 
.  .  .  The  obscurity  of  '  Sordello '  arises  not  so  much 
from  peculiarities  of  style  and  the  involved  structure  of  occa- 
sional sentences  as  from  the  unrelaxing  demand  which  is  made 
throughout  upon  the  intellectual  and  imaginative  energy  and 
alertness  of  the  reader.  .  .  .  There  is  not  a  line  of  the 
poem  that  is  not  as  full  of  matter  as  a  line  can  be." — Edward 
Dow  den. 

11  What  I  have  said  of  the  woman's  [Mrs.  Browning]  ob- 
scurity, affectations,  elisions,  will  apply  to  the  man's — with 
his  i'ths  and  o'ths,  his  dashes,  breaks,  halting  measures,  and 
oracular  exclamations  that  convey  no  dramatic  meaning  to 
the  reader.  .  .  .  Parodies  on  his  style,  thrown  off  as 
burlesque,  are  more  intelligible  than  much  of  his  '  Dramatis 
Personse.'  Unlike  Tennyson,  he  does  not  comprehend  the 
limits  of  a  theme  ;  nor  is  he  careful  as  to  the  relative  impor- 
tance of  either  themes  or  details  ;  his  mind  is  so  alert  that  its 
minute  turns  of  thought  must  be  uttered  ;  he  dwells  with 


688  BROWNING 

equal  precision  upon  the  meanest  and  grandest  objects,  and 
laboriously  jots  down  every  point  that  occurs  to  him — paren- 
thesis within  parenthesis — until  we  have  a  tangle  as  intricate 
as  the  lines  drawn  by  an  anemometer  upon  the  recording  sheet. 
The  poem  is  all  zigzag,  crisscross,  at  odds  and  ends  ;  and 
though  we  come  out  right  at  last,  strength  and  patience  are 
exhausted  in  mastering  it.  Apply  the  rule  that  nothing 
should  be  told  in  verse  which  can  be  told  in  prose,  and  half 
his  measures  would  be  condemned." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  In  '  Paracelsus  '  the  difficulties  were  in  the  quantity  and 
quality  of  things  ;  in  '  Sordello '  there  is  the  additional  dif- 
ficulty of  an  impracticable  style.  In  proportion  to  the  depth 
or  novelty  of  thought,  the  poet  has  chosen  to  render  the  vehi- 
cle difficult  in  which  it  is  conveyed — sometimes  by  erudite 
elaboration  of  parenthesis  within  parenthesis  and  question 
upon  query — sometimes  by  its  levity,  jaunty  indifference,  and 
apparent  contempt  of  everything — sometimes  it  has  an  inter- 
minable period  or  one  the  right  end  of  which  you  cannot 
find :  a  knotted  serpent,  which  either  has  no  discernible  tail, 
or  has  several,  the  ends  of  which  are  in  the  mouths  of  other 
serpents  or  else  flanking  in  the  air — sometimes  it  has  a  series 
of  the  shortest  possible  periods,  viz.,  of  one  word  or  of  two 
or  three  words. ' ' — R.  H.  Home. 

"  The  condensation  of  style  which  had  marked  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's previous  work  and  which  has  marked  his  later,  was  here 
["Sordello"] — in  consequence  of  an  unfortunate  and  most  un- 
necessary dread  of  verbosity,  induced  by  a  rash  and  foolish  cri- 
tique— accentuated  not  infrequently  into  dislocation. 
Mr.  Browning  is  too  much  the  reverse  of  obscure,  he  is  only 
too  brilliant  and  subtle." — John  Addington  Symonds. 

"  The  first  time  you  read  many  of  his  poems  you  make 
scarcely  any  headway.  You  begin  to  question  your  own  san- 
ity and  that  of  the  poet.  You  have  lurking  doubts  as  to 
whether  you  understand  the  English  tongue.  ...  He 
was  truly  the  most  obscure  thinker  that  ever  expressed  himself 


BROWNING  689 

in  the  English  language.  But  his  obscurity  arises,  not  from 
the  obscurity  of  the  thought,  but  from  its  overfulness. " — 
H.  H.  Boyesen. 

"They  [his  thoughts]  are  twisted,  entangled,  and  broken 
up  in  a  way  that  I  do  not  like  to  call  wilful,  but  which  has 
that  air." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  Ellipsis  reigns  supreme  ;  prepositions  and  relatives  are 
dispensed  with  ;  nominatives  and  accusatives  play  hide  and 
seek  'round  verbs  ;  we  get  lost  in  the  maze  of  transpositions 
and  stumble  over  irritating  and  obscure  parentheses." — R.  W. 
Church. 

11  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  to  '  Sordello  '  is  chiefly  at- 
tributable the  prevalent  idea  of  Mr.  Browning's  obscurity  as  a 
writer.  .  .  .  The  reader  of  Mr.  Browning  must  learn 
first  of  all  that  he  is  one.  of  that  class  of  writers  whose  finest 
thoughts  must  be  often  read  '  between  the  lines.'  Sometimes 
where  a  passage  seems  obscure  one  has  only  to  pause  and  re- 
flect what  would  be  the  tone  in  which  a  certain  speech  should 
naturally  be  uttered  to  find  the  dark  saying  light  up  to  one  of 
perhaps  unusual  simplicity." — M.  D.  Conway. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  About  that  strangest,  saddest,  sweetest  song 
I,  when  a  girl,  heard  in  Kameiros  once, 
And,  after,  saved  my  life  by  ?     Oh,  so  glad 
To  tell  you  my  adventures  !    Petale, 
Phullis,  Charope,  Chrusion  !     You  must  know, 
This  *  after '  fell  in  that  unhappy  time 
When  poor  reluctant  Nikias,  pushed  by  fate, 
Went  fluttering  against  Syracuse." 

— Balaustiorfs  Adventure. 

"  Having  and  holding,  till 
I  imprint  her  fast 
On  the  void  at  last 
As  the  sun  whom  he  will 
By  the  calotypist's  skill — 
44 


690  BROWNING 

11  Then — if  my  heart's  strength  serve, 
And  through  all  and  each 
Of  the  veils  I  reach 
To  her  soul  and  never  swerve, 
Knitting  an  iron  nerve — 

"  Command  her  soul  to  advance 

And  inform  the  shape 

Which  has  made  escape 
And  before  my  countenance 
Answers  me  glance  for  glance — 

"  I,  still  with  a  gesture  fit 
Of  my  hands  that  best 
Do  my  soul's  behest, 
Pointing  the  power  from  it, 
While  myself  do  steadfast  sit." — Mesmerism. 

"  Its  businesses  in  blood  and  blaze  this  year 
But  wile  the  hour  away — a  pastime  slight 
Till  he  shall  step  upon  the  platform  right ! 
And,  now  thus  much  is  settled,  cast  in  rough, 
Proved  feasible,  be  counselled  !  thought  enough. — 
Slumber,  Sordello  !  any  day  will  serve  : 
Were  it  a  less  digested  plan  !  how  swerve 
To-morrow  ?  "  — Sordello. 

4.  Fondness  for  Monologue. — "  We  see  also  [in  his 
"  Dramatic  Lyrics  "]  the  first  formal  beginning  of  the  dramatic 
monologue,  which  became,  from  the  period  of  '  Dramatic 
Lyrics  '  onward,  the  staple  form  and  special  instrument  of 
the  poet — an  instrument  finely  touched,  at  times,  by  other 
performers,  but  of  which  he  is  the  only  Liszt.  .  .  .  In 
1  Men  and  Women  '  Mr.  Browning's  special  instrument — the 
monologue — is  brought  to  perfection.  Such  monologues  as 
'  Andrea  del  Sarto '  or  the  '  Epistle  of  Karshish'  never  have 
been  and  probably  never  will  be  surpassed,  on  their  own 
ground,  after  their  own  order.  ...  In  'Bishop  Blou- 
gram's  Apology '  the  monologue  introduces  a  new  element, 
the  casuistical.  This  form — intellectual  rather  than 


BROWNING  691 

emotional,  argumentative  more  than  dramatic — has  had  from 
this  time  forward  a  considerable  attraction  for  Mr.  Browning, 
and  it  is  responsible  for  some  of  his  hardest  work,  such  as 
'  Fifine  at  the  Fair  '  and  '  Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau.' 
This  form  of  monologue  appears  in  Mr.  Browning's 
very  earliest  poem,  and  he  has  developed  it  more  skilfully  and 
employed  it  more  consistently  than  any  other  writer.  Even  in 
works  like  '  Sordello  '  and  '  The  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Coun- 
try,' which  are  thrown  into  the  narrative  form,  the  finest  and 
most  characteristic  parts  are  in  monologue  ;  and  '  The  Inn 
Album  '  is  a  series  of  slightly  linked  dialogues  which  are  only 
monologues  in  disguise.  Nearly  all  the  lyrics,  romances, 
idyls;  nearly  all  the  miscellaneous  poems,  long  and  short,  are 
monologues.  And  even  in  the  dramas  .  .  .  there  is 
visibly  a  growing  tendency  toward  the  monologue,  with  its 
mental  and  individual,  in  place  of  the  dialogue  with  its  active 
and  various,  interests." — -John  Addington  Symonds. 

"  Browning  is  a  dramatic  thinker, — generally  thinking 
within  the  imaginative  fetters  of  monologue,  even  when  not 
throwing  his  thoughts  into  that  external  form.  .  .  .  He 
is  a  great  imaginative  apologist  rather  than  either  a  lyric  or 
dramatic  poet.  .  .  .  The  consequence  is  that  he  is  con- 
stantly tempted  to  throw  his  dramatic  conceptions  into  a  form 
which  rids  him  altogether  of  the  necessity  for  a  plot.  . 
They  are  generally  apologetic  monologues  addressed  to  a  vis- 
ionary but  half- indicated  auditor.  .  .  .  Wherever  we 
have  a  peculiarly  jarring  metre  and  jingling  rhymes,  there  Mr. 
Browning  is  attempting  to  disguise  ...  a  speech  in  a 
song,  to  hide  the  tight  garment  of  apologetic  monologue  by 
throwing  over  it  the  easy  undress  of  spontaneous  feeling."- 
J?.  H,  Hutton. 

"  Even  in  the  most  conventional,  this  poet  cannot  refrain 
from  the  long  monologues,  stilted  action,  and  metaphysical 
discussion  which  mark  the  closet-drama  and  unfit  a  composi- 
tion for  the  stage." — £.  C.  Stedman. 


692  BROWNING 

"  As  part  of  his  method,  it  should  be  noted  that  his  real 
trust  is  upon  the  monologue  rather  than  upon  the  dialogue. 
In  much  the  larger  number  of  Browning's  poems 
there  is  but  one  speaker,  so  that  his  method  may  be  properly 
called  the  monodramatic.  The  time,  the  country,  the  social 
and  the  moral  environment,  the  situation  and  character  of  the 
speaker,  are  all  developed  through  his  words,  no  clew  being 
given  to  them  except  in  the  title  of  the  poem."—  G.  W. 
Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  she, — she  lies  in  my  hand  as  tame 

As  a  pear  late  basking  over  a  wall ; 
Just  a  touch  to  try,  and  off  it  came  ; 
'T  is  mine— can  I  let  it  fall  ? 

"  With  no  mind  to  eat  it,  that's  the  worst ! 

Were  it  thrown  in  the  road,  would  the  case  assist  ? 
'Twas  quenching  a  dozen  blue-flies'  thirst 
When  I  gave  its  stalk  a  twist. 

"  And  I, — what  I  seem  to  my  friend,  you  see ; 

What  I  soon  shall  seem  to  his  love,  you  guess  : 
What  I  seem  to  myself,  do  you  ask  of  me  ? 
No  hero,  I  confess. 

"  'T  is  an  awkward  thing  to  play  with  souls, 
And  matter  enough  to  save  one's  own  : 
Yet  think  of  my  friend,  and  the  burning  coals 
We  played  with  for  bits  of  stone  !  " 

— A  Light  Woman. 

11  You're  my  friend — 

What  a  thing  friendship  is,  world  without  end  ! 
How  it  gives  the  heart  and  soul  a  stir-up 
As  if  somebody  broached  you  a  glorious  runlet, 
And  poured  out,  all  lovelily,  sparklingly  sunlit, 
Our  green  Moldavia,  the  streaky  syrup, 


BROWNING  693 

Cotnar  as  old  as  the  time  of  the  Druids — 

Friendship  may  match  with  that  monarch  of  fluids  ; 

Each  supplies  a  dry  brain,  fills  you  its  ins-and-outs, 

Gives  your  life's  hour-glass  a  shake  when  the  thin  sand  doubts 

Whether  to  run  on  or  stop  short,  and  guarantees 

Age  is  not  all  made  of  stark  sloth  and  arrant  ease." 

—  The  Flight  of  the  Duchess. 

11  I  am  poor  brother  Lippo,  by  your  leave  ; 
You  need  not  clap  your  torches  to  my  face. 
Zooks,  what's  to  blame  ?  you  think  you  see  a  monk ! 
What,  'tis  past  midnight,  and  you  go  the  rounds, 
And  here  you  catch  me  at  an  alley's  end 
Where  sportive  ladies  leave  their  doors  ajar  ? 
The  Carmine's  my  cloister  :  hunt  it  up, 
Do — harry  out,  if  you  must  show  your  zeal, 
Whatever  rat,  there,  haps  on  his  wrong  hole, 
And  nip  each  softling  of  a  wee  white  mouse, 
Weke,  weke,  that's  crept  to  keep  him  company." 

— Fra  Lippo  Lippi. 

5.  Optimism  — Robust  Fortitude.  — In  this  day  of 
languid  pessimism,  when  the  columns  of  our  daily  press  teem 
with  records  of  morbidness,  despair,  and  suicide,  to  read  one 
of  Browning's  robust  lyrics  is  like  drinking  in  a  draught  of 
mountain  air,  uncontaminated  by  the  smoke  and  dust  of  civ- 
ilization. No  poet  better  illustrates  Lowell's  phrase  about 
"  bracing  the  moral  fibre." 

"  Browning  is  one  of  the  healthiest  of  modern  English  poets; 
there  is  nothing  morbid  in  his  writing ;  he  takes  an  intensely 
earnest  view  of  life  and  its  duties.  Taking  the  completed 
round  of  his  work,  from  '  Paracelsus  '  to  '  Asolando,'  the 
reader  will  find  that  Browning  is  essentially  optimistic.  To 
him  life  is  a  glad,  sweet  thing;  so  he  will  rejoice  therein  and 
be  glad.  Life  is  a  serious  and  earnest  piece  of  business — yet 
it  is  also  a  beautiful  and  joyous  thing  withal,  and  to  be  en- 
joyed as  the  Giver  meant  it  to  be." — Augustine  Birrell. 


694  BROWNING 

"  The  key  note  of  his  philosophy  is  : 

*  God's  in  his  heaven, 
All's  right  with  the  world  ! ' 

He  has  such  a  hopefulness  of  belief  in  human  nature  that  he 
shrunk  from  no  man,  however  clothed  and  cloaked  in  evil, 
however  miry  with  stumblings  and  fallings.  .  .  .  But 
the  test  of  optimism  is  its  sight  of  evil.  Mr.  Browning  has 
fathomed  it  and  he  can  still  hope,  for  he  sees  the  reflection  of 
the  sun  in  the  depths  of  every  dull  pool  and  puddle. 
The  teaching  in  '  A  Bean-Stripe  '  is  the  same  that  Mr.  Brown- 
ing has  given  us  all  through  his  career  :  the  utterance  of  a 
sturdy  but  by  no  means  facile  optimism,  not  untried,  indeed, 
but  unconquerable." — John  Addington  Symonds. 

"  Browning  had  contempt  for  hopelessness,  hatred  for  de- 
spair, joy  for  eager  hope,  faith  in  perfection,  pity  for  all  effort 
which  only  claimed  this  world,  for  all  love  which  was  content 
to  begin  and  end  on  earth,  reproof  for  all  goodness  and  beauty 
which  was  content  to  die  forever." — Stopf or d  Brooke. 

"  There  is  none  of  the  feeble  optimism  of  his  age  in  Brown- 
ing. He  is  no  poet  who  exults  in  the  enormous  preponder- 
ance of  good  over  evil  in  human  life.  .  .  .  On  the  other 
hand,  no  one  has  taught  more  positively  than  Browning  that 
life,  if  confined  to  this  earth  and  without  any  infinite  love  in 
it,  is  not  the  life  which  has  filled  the  noblest  minds  with  ex- 
ultation, nor,  indeed,  any  shadow  of  it." — ^?.  H.  Hutton. 

11  Mr.  Browning  is  an  optimist ;  but  the  idea  of  a  progress 
of  mankind  enters  into  his  poems  in  a  comparatively  slight 
degree.  Mr.  Browning  makes  that  progress  dependent  on  the 
productions  of  higher  passions  and  aspirations, — hopes  and 
joys  and  sorrow." — Edward  Dowden. 

"The  continuity  of  civilization  and  of  the  life  of  the  hu- 
man spirit,  widening  by  an  inevitable  arid  healthful  process  of 
growth  and  expansion,  evidently  enters  into  all  his  thought, 
and  gives  it  a  certain  repose  even  in  the  intensity  of  passion- 


BROWNING  695 

ate  utterance.  Whatever  decay  of  former  ideals  and  tradi- 
tions his  contemporaries  may  discover  and  lament,  Browning 
holds  to  the  general  soundness  and  wholesomeness  of  progress, 
and  finds  each  successive  stage  of  growth  not  antagonistic  but 
supplementary  to  those  which  have  preceded  it.  ... 
Though  all  the  world  turn  pessimist,  this  singer  will  still  drink 
of  the  fountains  of  joy  and  trace  the  courses  of  the  streams  that 
flow  from  it  by  green  masses  of  foliage  and  the  golden  glory 
of  fruit.  .  .  .  Instead  of  being  overwhelmed  by  the  vast- 
ness  of  modern  life,  he  rejoices  in  it  as  the  swimmer  rejoices 
when  he  feels  the  fathomless  sea  buoyant  to  his  stroke,  and 
floats  secure,  the  abysses  beneath  and  the  infinity  of  space  over- 
head."—Zf.  W.  Mabie. 

"  His  optimism  ...  is  a  conviction  which  has  sus- 
tained the  shocks  of  criticism  and  the  test  of  facts.  Outer 
law  and  inner  motive  are,  for  the  poet,  manifestations  of  the 
same  beneficent  purpose  ;  and  instead  of  duty  in  the  sense  of 
an  autocratic,  imperative,  or  beneficent  tyranny,  he  finds  deep 
beneath  man's  foolishness  and  sin  a  constant  tendency  toward 
the  good  which  is  bound  up  with  the  very  nature  of  man's 
reason  and  will.  .  .  .  Carlyle's  cry  of  despair  is  turned 
by  Browning  into  a  song  of  victory.  While  the  former  re- 
gards the  struggle  between  good  and  evil  as  a  fixed  battle,  in 
which  the  forces  are  immovably  interlocked,  the  latter  has 
the  consciousness  of  battling  against  a  retreating  foe  ;  and  the 
conviction  of  coming  triumph  gives  joyous  vigor  to  every 
stroke.  .  .  .  He  strives  hard  to  come  into  the  misery  of 
man  in  all  its  sadness  ;  and,  after  doing  so,  he  claims,  not  as 
a  matter  of  poetic  sentiment  but  as  a  matter  of  strict  truth, 
that  good  is  the  heart  and  reality  of  it  all.  It  is  true  that  he 
cannot  demonstrate  the  truth  of  his  principle  by  reference  to 
all  the  facts  any  more  than  the  scientific  man  can  justify  his 
hypothesis  in  every  detail  ;  but  he  holds  it  as  a  faith  which 
reason  can  justify  and  experience  establish,  although  not  in 
every  isolated  phenomenon." — Henry  James. 


696  BROWNING 

"  One  glorious  characteristic  of  his  many-sided  poetry 
.  .  .  is  Mr.  Browning's  magnificent  optimism.  .  .  . 
It  is  large-sighted  and  nobly  masculine.  .  .  .  It  is  an 
optimism  which  had  been  nobly  fought  for  through  years  of 
neglect,  disappointment,  poverty,  and  trial,  till  it  had  become 
the  supreme  conviction  of  his  reason." — P.  W.  Farrar. 

"  For  him  there  can  be  no  eventual  failure;  there  may  be 
often  an  apparent  failure — the  soul  may  be  unmade  by  folly, 
unmanned  by  evil — but  the  nobler  part  of  man's  nature  must 
finally  triumph;  and  the  soul  will  be  remade  '  in  those  other 
heights  in  other  lives  '  which  shall  yet  be  a  reality  to  every 
son  of  Adam.  If  a  man  does  fail  in  his  pursuit  after  Truth  or 
Goodness  or  Beauty,  he  is  not  finally  overcome  ;  he  has  gained 
somewhat — he  has  endeavored  ;  for  had  he  not  attempted  he 
could  not  have  failed  :  consequently,  failure  but  implies  ulti- 
mate success." —  William  G.  Kings  land. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Then  welcome  each  rebuff 

That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 
Each  sting  that  bids  not  sit  nor  stand  but  go  ! 

Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain  ! 

Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain  ; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang  ;  dare,  never  grudge  the  throe  ! 

"  Let  us  not  always  say, 

1  Spite  of  this  flesh  to-day 

I  strove,  made  head,  gained  ground  upon  the  whole  !' 
As  the  bird  wings  and  sings, 
Let  us  cry,  '  All  good  things 

Are  ours,  nor  soul  helps  flesh  more  now  than  flesh  helps  soul ! ' ' 

— Rabbi  Ben  Ezra. 

"  It's  wiser  being  good  than  bad  ; 

It's  safer  being  meek  than  fierce  ; 
It's  fitter  being  sane  than  mad. 
My  own  hope  is,  a  sun  will  pierce 


BROWNING  697 

The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched  ; 
That,  after  Last  returns  the  First, 

Though  a  wide  compass  'round  be  fetched  ; 
That  what  began  best  can't  end  worst, 
Nor  what  God  blessed  once,  prove  accurst." 

— Apparent  Failure. 

"  God  uses  us  to  help  each  other  so, 

Lending  our  minds  out.     Have  you  noticed,  now, 

Your  cullion's  hanging  face  ?     A  bit  of  chalk, 

And  trust  me  but  you  should,  though  !     How  much  more 

If  I  drew  higher  things  with  the  same  truth  ! 

That  were  to  take  the  Prior's  pulpit-place, 

Interpret  God  to  all  of  you  !     Oh  !  oh  ! 

It  makes  me  mad  to  see  what  men  shall  do 

And  we  in  our  graves  !     This  world's  no  blot  for  us 

Nor  blank  ;  it  means  intensely,  and  means  good  : 

To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink." 

— Fra  Lippo  Lippi. 

6.  Strong,  Undaunted  Religious  Faith.— Much  has 
been  written  concerning  Browning's  religious  creed,  but  there 
seems  to  be  no  general  agreement  in  defining  it.  Certainly 
he  was  not  "  orthodox,"  in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  that 
term  ;  yet  it  is  doubtful  if  any  of  the  "  orthodox  "  poets,  or 
all  of  them  put  together,  have  done  so  much  to  lead  and  lift 
men  up  to  a  higher  life  and  to  nobler  aspirations.  A  Deist 
Browning  certainly  is,  if  not  much  more. 

"  This  vivid  hope  and  trust  in  man  is  bound  up  with  a 
strong  and  strenuous  faith  in  God.  Mr.  Browning's  Christi- 
anity is  wider  than  our  creeds,  and  is  all  the  more  vitally 
Christian  in  that  it  never  sinks  into  pietism.  He  is  never  di- 
dactic ;  but  his  faith  is  the  root  of  his  art,  and  transforms  and 
transfigures  it." — -John  Addington  Symonds. 

"  Browning  never  faltered  in  his  claim  of  the  spiritual  as 
the  first,  as  the  master  in  human  nature ;  nor  in  his  faith  of 
God  with  us,  making,  guiding,  loving  us,  and  crowning  us  at 
last  with  righteousness  and  love.  .  .  .  No  poets  have 


698  BROWNING 

ever  been  more  theological,  not  even  Byron  and  Shelley. 
[Speaking  of  Browning  and  Tennyson.]  What  original  sin 
means  and  what  position  man  holds  on  account  of  it,  lies  at 
the  root  of  half  of  Browning's  poetry ;  and  the  greater  part 
of  his  very  simple  metaphysics  belongs  to  the  solution  of  this 
question  of  the  defect  in  man." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  Browning  is  the  modern  interpreter  of  the  divine  in 
nature  and  life  and  history." — R.  H.  Home. 

11  Mr.  Browning  in  this  volume  ["  La  Saisiaz  :  The  Two 
Poets  of  Croisic  "]  declares  that  he  is  '  very  sure  of  God.'  It 
is  not  that  he  has  remained  unmoved  during  the  discussion  of 
the  difficult  religious  problems  of  the  day.  He  has  evidently 
followed  them  well,  but  the  circumstances  which  led  to  the 
production  of  '  La  Saisiaz  '  demonstrated  that  he  could  not 
hark  back  from  his  robust  intellectual  and  spiritual  faith  into 
the  mists  of  infidelity.  .  .  .  The  whole  of  this  poem 
£"  Pippa  Passes  "]  is  permeated  with  that  large  faith  in  God 
and  in  humanity  which  has  always  been  characteristic  of  Mr. 
Browning." — G.  B.  Smith. 

"  The  difficulties  which  surround  him  are  not  those  of  a 
casuist  but  the  stubborn  questionings  of  a  spirit  whose  re- 
ligious faith  is  thoroughly  earnest  and  fearless.  ...  He 
is  clearly  one  of  that  class  of  poets  who  are  also  prophets. 
He  was  never  merely  '  the  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day  ' 
but  one  for  whom  poetic  enthusiasm  was  intimately  bound 
with  religious  faith  and  who  spoke  '  in  numbers.'  '  — Henry 
James. 

"  Mr.  Browning  is  pre-eminently  the  religious  poet — 
healthy,  manly,  brave  ;  with  a  hope  like  Jacob's  ladder,  reach- 
ing from  earth  to  highest  heaven.  To  him  Hope  is  visible 
the  world  around.  .  .  .  Browning  is  one  of  the  health- 
iest of  English  poets;  there  is  nothing  morbid  in  his  writing 
— as  he  himself  so  recently  told  us  ;  of  necessity,  therefore,  he 
takes  an  intensely  earnest  view  of  life  and  its  duties.  To  him 
this  present  life  is  not  the  playtime  but  the  apprenticeship  of 


BROWNING  699 

the  soul ;  not  the  place  for  rest  but  for  good,  honest,  hearty 
work." — W.  G.  Kings  land. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"1  believe  it !     'Tis  thou,  God,  that  givest,  'tis  I  who  receive  : 
In  the  first  is  the  last,  in  thy  will  is  my  power  to  believe. 
All's  one  gift  :  thou  canst  grant  it,  moreover,  as  prompt  to  my 

prayer, 
As  I  breathe  out  this  breath,  as  I  open  these  arms  to  the  air." 

— Saul. 
"  Fool !     All  that  is  at  all, 

Lasts  ever,  past  recall  ; 

Earth  changes,  but  thy  soul  and  God  stand  sure  : 
What  entered  into  thee, 
That  was,  is,  and  shall  be  : 
Time's  wheel  runs  back  or  stops  :  Potter  and  clay  endure. 

"  He  fixed  thee  mid  this  dance 

Of  plastic  circumstance, 

This  Present,  thou,  forsooth,  wouldst  fain  arrest : 
Machinery  just  meant 
To  give  thy  soul  its  bent, 
Try  thee  and  turn  thee  forth,  sufficiently  impressed." 

—Rabbi  Ben  Ezra. 

"  Therefore  to  whom  turn  I  but  to  thee,  the  ineffable  Name  ? 
Builder  and  maker,  thou,  of  houses  not  made  with  hands  ! 
What,  have  fear  of  change  from  thee  who  art  ever  the  same  ? 
Doubt  that  thy  power  can  fill  the  heart  that  thy  power  ex- 
pands ? 
There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good  !     What  was,  shall  live  as 

before  ; 

The  evil  is  null,  is  nought,  is  silence  implying  sound  ; 
What  was  good,  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much  good 

more  ; 

On  the   earth  the  broken  arcs ;    in  the  heaven,  a  perfect 
round." — Abt  Vogler. 

7.  Grotesqueness— Incongruity. — "  Mr.  Browning  is 
an  artist  working  by  incongruity.      Possibly  hardly  one  of  his 


7OO  BROWNING 

most  considerable  efforts  can  be  found  which  is  not  gr-ea-t  be- 
cause of  its  odd  mixture.  He  puts  together  things  which  no 
one  else  would  have  put  together.  .  .  .  It  is  very  natu- 
ral that  a  poet  whose  wishes  incline  or  whose  genius  conducts 
him  to  a  grotesque  art  should  be  attracted  towards  mediaeval 
subjects.  .  .  .  Good  elements  hidden  in  horrid  accom- 
paniments are  the  special  theme  of  grotesque  art ;  and  these 
mediaeval  life  and  legends  afford  more  copiously  than  could 
have  been  furnished  before  Christianity  gave  it  new  elements 
of  good  or  since  modern  civilization  has  removed  some  few,  at 
least,  of  the  elements  of  destruction.  .  .  .  Browning  has 
given  many  excellent  specimens  of  grotesque  art  within  proper 
boundaries  and  limits." — Walter  Bagehot. 

"  With  the  doubtful  exception  of  the  '  Heretic's  Tragedy,' 
'  Caliban  upon  Setebos  '  is  probably  the  finest  piece  of  gro- 
tesque art  in  the  language.  .  .  .  The  '  Pietro  '  of  Abano 
is  a  fine  piece  of  grotesque  art,  full  of  pungent  humor,  acute- 
ness,  worldly  wisdom,  and  clever  phrasing  and  rhyming. 
.  .  .  The  poem  is  one  of  the  most  characteristic  examples 
of  that  '  Teutonic  grotesque,  which  lies  in  the  expression  of 
deep  ideas  through  fantastic  form  ' — a  grotesque  of  noble  and 
cultivated  art — of  which  Mr.  Browning  is  as  great  a  master  in 
poetry  as  Carlyle  was  in  prose." — -John  Addington  Symonds. 

"  A  more  valid  accusation  touches  the  many  verbal  per- 
versities, in  which  a  poet  has  less  right  than  another  to  in- 
dulge. The  compound  Latin  and  English  of  *  Don  Giacinto,' 
notwithstanding  the  fun  of  the  piece,  still  grows  a  burden  to 
the  flesh.  Then  there  are  harsh  and  formless  lines,  bursts 
of  metrical  chaos,  from  which  a  writer's  dignity  and  self- 
respect  ought  surely  to  be  enough  to  preserve  him.  Again, 
there  are  passages  marked  by  a  coarse  violence  of  expression 
that  is  nothing  short  of  barbarous.  ...  It  may  well  be, 
therefore,  that  the  grotesque  caprices  which  Mr.  Browning 
unfortunately  permits  to  himself  may  find  misguided  admirers, 
or,  what  is  worse,  even  imitators.  .  .  .  The  countrymen 


BROWNING  701 

of  Shakespeare  have  had  to  learn  to  forgive  terrible  uncouth- 
nesses,  blunt  outrages  to  form  and  beauty,  to  fine  creative 
genius." — -John  Morley. 

"He  loves  what  is  odd,  grotesque,  morbid,  quaint.  Brown- 
ing's poetry  is  often  harsh  in  manner,  wanting  in  melody, 
and  rough  in  rhyme  and  metre.  He  introduces  uncouth  and 
distracting  rhymes." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Will  sprawl,  now  that  the  heat  of  day  is  past, 
Flat  on  his  belly  in  the  pit's  much  mire, 
With  elbows  wide,  fists  clenched  to  prop  his  chin  ; 
And  while  he  kicks  both  feet  in  the  cool  slush, 
And  feels  about  his  spine  small  eft  things  course, 
Run  in  and  out  each  arm,  and  make  him  laugh — 

Thinketh  he  dwelleth  i'  the  cold  o'  the  moon  ; 
Thinketh  he  made  it,  with  the  sun  to  match. 
But  not  the  stars — the  stars  came  otherwise  : 
Only  made  clouds,  winds,  meteors,  such  as  that." 

— Caliban  upon  Setebos. 

"  That's  if  ye  carve  my  epitaph  aright, 

Choice  Latin,  picked  phrase,  Tully's  every  word, 
No  gaudy  ware  like  Gandolf  s  second  line — 
Tully,  my  masters  ?     Ulpian  serves  his  need  ! 
And  then  how  I  shall  lie  through  centuries, 
And  hear  the  blessed  mutter  of  the  mass, 
And  see  God  made  and  eaten  all  day  long, 
And  feel  the  steady  candle-flame,  and  taste 
Good  strong,  thick,  stupefying  incense-smoke  ! 
For  as  I  lie  here,  hours  of  the  dead  night, 
Dying  in  state  and  by  such  slow  degrees, 
I  fold  my  arms  as  if  they  clasped  a  crook, 
And  stretch  my  feet  forth  straight  as  stone  can  point, 
And  let  the  bedclothes  for  a  mortcloth  drop 
Into  great  laps  and  folds  of  sculptor's  work." 
—  The  Bishop  Orders  His  Tomb  at  Saint  Praxetfs  Church. 


702  BROWNING 

"  A  viscid  choler  is  observable 

In  tertians,  I  was  nearly  bold  to  say  ; 

And  falling-sickness  hath  a  happier  cure 

Than  our  school  wots  of :  there's  a  spider  here 

Weaves  no  web,  watches  on  the  ledge  of  tombs, 

Sprinkled  with  mottles  on  an  ash-gray  back  ; 

Take  five  and  drop  them     .     .     .     but  who  knows  his  mind, 

The  Syrian  run-a-gate  I  trust  this  to  ? 

His  service  payeth  me  a  sublimate 

Blown  up  his  nose  to  help  the  ailing  eye. 

Best  wait  :  I  reach  Jerusalem  at  morn." — An  Epistle. 

8.  Earnestness— Soberness. — With  Browning,  life  is 
a  serious  matter.  There  is  little  of  the  sportive  element  in  his 
verse,  little  of  the  lighter  forms  of  humor. 

"  Most  of  Browning's  poems  might  be  described  precisely 
as  proposing  for  their  immediate  object  truth,  not  pleasure  ; 
though,  when  clearly  apprehended,  they  seldom  fail  to  give 
that  higher  kind  of  imaginative  satisfaction  which  is  one  of 
the  most  enviable  intellectual  states,  they  give  a  very  moder- 
ate amount  of  immediate  sensitive  pleasure." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  '  A  Blot  on  the  'Scutcheon  '  [on  the  stage]  failed.  This, 
of  course,  for  there  is  little  in  it  to  relieve  the  human  spirit — 
which  cannot  bear  too  much  of  earnestness  and  woe  added  to 
the  mystery  and  wonder  of  our  daily  lives." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

11  His  voice  sounds  loudest  and  also  clearest  for  the  things 
which,  as  a  race,  we  like  best — the  fascination  of  faith,  the  ac- 
ceptance of  life,  the  respect  for  its  mysteries,  the  endurance 
of  its  changes,  the  vitality  of  the  will,  the  validity  of  charac- 
ter, the  beauty  of  action,  the  seriousness,  above  all,  of  the 
great  human  passion." — Henry  James. 

"  The  lines  [George  Meredith's  "  Modern  Love  "]  convey 
poetic  sentiment  rather  than  reasoned  truth ;  while  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's close  [to  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book  "]  would  be  no  unfit 
epilogue  to  a  scientific  essay  on  history  or  a  treatise  on  the 
errors  of  the  human  understanding  and  the  inaccuracy  of 
human  opinions  and  judgment.  This  is  the  common  note 


BROWNING  703 

of  his  highest  work ;  hard  thought  and  reason  illustrating 
themselves  in  dramatic  circumstances,  and  the  thought  and 
reason  are  not  wholly  fused,  they  exist  apart  and  irradiate 
with  far-shooting  beams  the  moral  confusion  of  the  tragedy." 
— -John  Morley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  We  that  had  loved  him  so,  followed  him,  honored  him, 
Lived  in  his  mild  and  magnificent  eye, 
Learned  his  great  language,  caught  his  clear  accents, 
Made  him  our  pattern  to  live  and  to  die  ! 
Shakespeare  was  of  us,  Milton  was  for  us, 
Burns,  Shelley,  were  with  us, — they  watch  from  their  graves  ! 
He  alone  breaks  from  the  van  and  the  freemen, 
He  alone  sinks  to  the  rear  and  the  slaves." 

—  The  Lost  Leader. 
"  Poor  vaunt  of  life,  indeed, 

Were  man  but  formed  to  feed 
On  joy,  to  solely  seek  and  find  and  feast : 
Such  feasting  ended,  then 
As  sure  an  end  to  men  ; 

Irks  care  the  crop-full  bird  ?     Frets  doubt   the   maw-crammed 
beast  ? 

"  For  thence,— a  paradox 

Which  comforts  while  it  mocks, — 
Shall  life  succeed  in  that  it  seems  to  fail  : 
What  I  aspired  to  be, 
And  was  not,  comforts  me  : 
A  brute  I  might  have  been,  but  would  not  sink  i'  the  scale." 

— Rabbi  Ben  Ezra. 

"  Oh,  we're  sunk  enough  here,  God  knows  i 
But  not  quite  so  sunk  that  moments, 
Sure  though  seldom,  are  denied  us, 
When  the  spirit's  true  endowments 
Stand  out  plainly  from  its  false  ones, 
And  apprise  it  if  pursuing 
Or  the  right  way  or  the  wrong  way, 
To  its  triumph  or  undoing. 


704  BROWNING 

"  There  are  flashes  struck  from  midnights, 
There  are  fire-flames  noondays  kindle, 
Whereby  piled-up  honours  perish, 
Whereby  swollen  ambitions  dwindle, 
While  just  this  or  that  poor  impulse, 
Which  for  once  had  play  unstifled, 
Seems  the  sole  work  of  a  lifetime 
That  away  the  rest  have  trifled." — Cristina. 

I/  9.  Cool,  Grim  Satire,  Often  Humorous. — As  might 
be  expected  in  a  man  of  Browning's  robust  temperament,  he 
deals  but  little  in  the  milder  forms  of  satire.  There  is  little 
of  the  good-humored  banter  of  Lamb,  little  of  the  sly  thrust 
of  Addison.  Like  Johnson,  Burke,  and  Macaulay,  Browning 
prefers  a  bludgeon  to  a  stiletto,  and  strikes  his  victim  square- 
ly in  front  or  pierces  him  with  arrows  that  leave  a  stinging 
wound. 

"This  power  [satire]  is  a  favorite  with  Browning,  who 
certainly  possesses  it  abundant  in  measure  and  trenchant  in 
quality.  He  has  employed  it  with  singular  success ;  but  then 
to  its  employment  he  has  not  unfrequently  sacrificed  poetry. 
.  .  .  Each  [monologue]  is  a  legitimate,  because  a  poetic, 
exercise  of  the  tremendous  power  of  satire  possessed  by  its 
writer.  And  each  gives  proof  of  how  disinterested  he  is  in 
its  employment ;  since  he  forbears  all  appeal  to  the  ill-nature 
of  his  readers  by  directing  its  lightnings  against  evil-doers 
remote  from  them,  instead  (like  the  older  satirists)  of  aiming 
them  at  the  sinners  at  their  doors.  .  .  .  Nor  should 
we  omit  to  notice  the  deep-rooted  convictions,  alike  moral 
and  religious,  from  which  Browning's  severer  satire  springs ; 
or  fail  to  acknowledge  that  if  he  sometimes  disallows  the 
claims  of  the  beautiful,  he  is  never  unmindful  of  those  of 
the  truth." — Stopf or d  Brooke. 

"As  a  humorist  in  poetry,  Mr.  Browning  takes  rank  with 
our  greatest.  His  humor,  like  most  of  his  qualities,  is  pecul- 
iar to  himself;  though  no  doubt  Carlyle  had  something  of  it. 


BROWNING  7O5 

It  is  of  remarkably  wide  capacity,  and  ranges  from  the  effer- 
vescence of  pure  fun  and  freak  to  that  salt  and  briny  laughter 
whose  taste  is  bitterer  than  tears."— John  Addington  Symonds. 
"His  humor  is  as  genuine  as  that  of  Carlyle,  and  if  his 
laugh  have  not  the  earthquake  character  with  which  Emerson 
has  so  happily  labelled  the  shaggy  merriment  of  that  Jean 
Paul,  Burns,  yet  it  is  always  sincere  and  hearty,  and  there  is  a 
tone  of  meaning  in  it  which  always  sets  us  to  thinking." — 
Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 
"  Was  it  '  grammar '  wherein  you  would  coach  me — 

Was  it  '  clearness  of  words  which  convey  thought'  ? 

Ay,  if  words  ever  needed  enswathe  naught 

But  ignorance,  impudence,  envy 

And  malice — what  word-swathe  would  then  vie 

With  yours  for  a  clearness  crystalline  ? 

But  had  you  to  put  in  one  small  line 

Some  thought  big  and  bouncing — as  noddle 

Of  goose,  born  to  cackle  and  waddle, 

You'd  know,  as  you  hissed,  spat,  and  sputtered, 
Clear  '  quack-quack  '  is  easily  uttered." — Pacchiarotto. 

"  See,  as  the  prettiest  graves  will  do  in  time, 
Our  poet's  wants  the  freshness  of  its  prime  ; 
Spite  of  the  sexton's  browsing  horse,  the  sods 
Have  struggled  through  its  binding  osier  rods  ; 
Headstone  and  half-sunk  footstone  lean  awry, 
Wanting  the  brick-work  promised  by-and-by  ; 
How  the  minute  gray  lichens,  plate  o'er  plate, 
Have  softened  down  the  crisp-cut  name  and  date !  " 

— Earth's  Immortalities » 

"  And  this — why,  he  was  red  in  vain, 

Or  black — poor  fellow  that  is  blue  ! 
What  fancy  was  it,  turned  your  brain  ? 

Oh,  women  were  the  prize  for  you ! 
45 


706  BROWNING 

Money  gets  women,  cards  and  dice 
Get  money,  and  ill-luck  gets  just 

The  copper  couch  and  one  clear,  nice, 
Cool  squirt  of  water  o'er  your  bust — 
The  right  thing  to  extinguish  lust !  " 

— Apparent  Failure. 

10.  Fondness  for  Argumentation. — "  One  may  find 
such  a  point  in  that  ["  Balaustion  "]  which  critics  know  as 
the  Euripidean  sophistry,  .  .  .  and  which  means  the 
tendency  of  his  characters  to  argue  for  argument's  sake,  to 
conduct  the  pleadings  of  passion  like  pleadings  at  the  bar,  to 
say  everything  which  can  be  said." — Sidney  Colvin. 

"  Generally  speaking,  where  Lord  Tennyson  is  meditative, 
Browning  is  argumentative,  showing  us  his  thought  in  process 
as  it  moves  from  point  to  point." — Mary  Wilson. 

"  Mr.  Browning's  argumentative  verse  divides  itself  into 
two  classes ;  those  in  which  the  speaker  is  defending  a  pre- 
conceived judgment,  and  an  antagonist  is  implied,  and  those 
in  which  he  is  trying  to  form  a  judgment  or  accept  one ;  and 
the  supposed  listener,  if  there  be  such,  is  only  a  confidant. 
The  first  kind  of  argument  or  discussion  is  carried  on — 
apparently — as  much  for  victory  as  for  truth ;  and  employs 
the  weapons  of  satire  or  the  tactics  of  special-pleading,  as 
the  case  demands.  The  second  is  an  often  pathetic  and 
always  single-minded  endeavor  to  get  at  the  truth. " — Mrs. 
Sutherland  Orr. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Your  business  is  not  to  catch  men  with  show, 
With  homage  to  the  perishable  clay, 
But  lift  them  over  it,  ignore  it  all, 
Make  them  forget  there's  such  a  thing  as  flesh. 
Your  business  is  to  paint  the  souls  of  men — 
Man's  soul,  and  it's  a  fire,  smoke     ...     no,  it's  not     .     .     . 
It's  vapor  done  up  like  a  new-born  babe — 
(In  that  shape  when  you  die  it  leaves  your  mouth) 


BROWNING 

It's     .     .     .     well,  what  matters  talking,  it's  the  soul ! 
Give  us  no  more  of  body  than  shows  soul ! 
Here's  Giotto,  with  his  Saint  a-praising  God, 
That  sets  us  praising,— why  not  stop  with  him  ? 
Why  put  all  thoughts  of  praise  out  of  our  head 
With  wonder  at  lines,  colors,  and  what-not  ? 
Paint  the  soul,  never  mind  the  legs  and  arms !  " 

— Fra  Lippo  Lippi. 

"  As  it  was  better,  youth 
Should  strive,  through  acts  uncouth, 

Toward  making  than  repose  on  aught  found  made  : 
So,  better,  age,  exempt 
From  strife,  should  know  than  tempt 

Further.     Thou  waitedst  age  :  wait  death  nor  be  afraid ! 

"  Enough  now,  if  the  Right 

And  Good  and  Infinite 

Be  named  here,  as  thou  callest  thy  hand  thine  own, 
With  knowledge  absolute, 
Subject  to  no  dispute 

From  fools  that  crowded  youth,  nor  let  thee  feel  alone." 

— Rabbi  Ben  Ezra . 


"  What  of  a  villa  ?     Though  winter  be  over  in  March  by  rights, 
'Tis  May  perhaps  ere  the  snow  shall  have  withered  well  off  the 

heights: 
You've  the  brown  ploughed  land  before,  where  the  oxen  steam 

and  wheeze, 
And  the  hills  over-smoked  behind  by  the  faint  gray  olive-trees. 

All  the  year  long  at  the  villa,  nothing  to  see  though  you  linger, 
Except  yon  cypress  that  points  like  death's  lean  lifted  forefinger. 
Some  think  fireflies  pretty,  when  they  mix  i'  the  corn  and  mingle, 
Or  thrid  the  stinking  hemp  till  the  stalks  of  it  seem  a-tingle. 
Late  August  or  early  September  the  stunning  cicala  is  shrill, 
And  the  bees  keep  their  tiresome  whine  round  the  resinous  firs 

on  the  hill. 
Enough  of  the  seasons, — I  spare  you  the  months  of  the  fever 

and  chill." — Up  at  a  Villa — Down  in  the  City. 


7O8  BROWNING 

II.  Dramatic  Power.—  "Browning,  when  in  a  poem 
or  drama  he  puts  forth  his  peculiar  power,  when  he  writes 
with  that  motive  which  gives  his  work  its  singular  value, 
is  always  dramatic.  Whether  he  is  so  of  purpose  I  shall 
not  venture  to  say  ;  but  the  seeming  of  his  poetry  is  that 
it  takes  shape  from  a  necessity  of  his  moral  nature,  not 
from  a  deliberate  intellectual  preference." — Richard  Grant 
White. 

"It  is  customary  to  call  Browning  a  dramatist,  and  with- 
out doubt  he  represents  the  dramatic  element,  such  as  it  is,  of 
the  recent  English  school.  He  counts  among  his  admirers 
many  intellectual  persons,  some  of  whom  pronounce  him  the 
greatest  dramatic  poet  since  Shakespeare,  and  one  has  said 
that  '  it  is  to  him  that  we  must  pay  homage  for  whatever  is 
good  and  great  and  profound  in  the  second  period  of  the 
poetic  drama  of  England.'  .  .  .  Something  of  a  dramatic 
character  pertains  to  nearly  all  of  Browning's  lyrics.  Like 
his  wife,  he  has  preferred  to  study  human  hearts  rather  than 
the  forms  of  nature." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"It  is  sometimes  also  suggested  that  there  are  dramatic 
poets  and  dramatic  poets  ;  that,  though  Browning  does  not 
follow  the  modes  of  Shakespeare,  he  is  in  a  certain  sense,  and 
in  a  very  true  sense,  dramatic  in  spirit  if  not  in  form.  But  I 
do  not  think  we  see  sufficient  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
Browning  works  with  quite  a  different  intention  to,  and  in 
quite  a  different  manner  from,  Shakespeare;  and  must  be 
judged  by  other  standards,  that  is,  by  his  own.  .  .  .  We 
see  in  Browning  a  drama  of  the  interior,  a  tragedy  or  comedy 
of  the  soul.  .  .  .  The  dramatic  principles  of  Browning 
are  not  those  of  Shakespeare.  Shakespeare  makes  his  charac- 
ters live  ;  Browning  makes  his  characters  think."— -John  Ad- 
dington  Symonds. 

"  To  us  he  appears  to  have  a  wider  range  and  greater  free- 
dom of  movement  than  any  other  of  the  younger  English  poets. 
In  his  dramas  we  find  always  a  leading  design  and  a  conscious 


BROWNING  709 

subordination  of  all  the  parts  to  it.  In  each  one  of  them,  also, 
below  the  more  apparent  and  exterior  sources  of  interest  we 
find  an  illustration  of  some  general  idea  which  bears  only  a 
philosophical  relation  to  the  particular  characters,  thoughts, 
and  incidents,  and  without  which  the  drama  is  still  complete 
in  itself,  but  which  yet  binds  together  and  sustains  the  whole 
and  conduces  to  that  unity  for  which  we  esteem  these  works 
so  highly.  In  another  respect,  Mr.  Browning's  dramatic 
power  is  rare.  The  characters  of  his  women  are  finely  dis- 
criminated. No  two  are  alike,  and  yet  the  characteristic  feat- 
ures of  each  are  touched  with  the  most  delicate  precision.  By 
far  the  greater  number  of  authors  who  have  attempted  female 
characters  have  given  us  mere  automata.  They  think  it  enough 
if  they  make  them  subordinate  to  a  generalized  idea  of  human 
nature.  Mr.  Browning  never  forgets  that  women  are  women 
and  not  simply  human  beings;  for  there  they  occupy  common 
ground  with  men.  Many  English  dramas  have  been  written 
within  a  few  years,  the  authors  of  which  have  established  their 
claim  to  the  title  of  poet.  We  cannot  but  allow  that  we  find 
in  them  fine  thoughts  finely  expressed,  passages  of  dignified 
and  sustained  eloquence,  and  as  adequate  a  conception  of  char- 
acter as  the  reading  of  history  and  the  study  of  models  will 
furnish.  But  it  is  only  in  Browning  that  we  find  enough  of 
freshness,  vigor,  grasp,  and  of  that  clear  insight  and  concep- 
tion which  enable  the  artist  to  construct  characters  from 
within  and  so  to  make  them  real  things  and  not  images, 
to  warrant  our  granting  the  honor  due  to  this  dramatist." — 
Lowell. 

"The  dramatic  element  in  Browning's  poetry  renders  it 
difficult  to  construct  his  character  from  his  works  ;  .  .  . 
though  a  true  dramatist,  he  is  not  like  Shakespeare  and  Scott, 
whose  characters  seem  never  to  have  had  an  author." — Henry 
James. 

11  One  critic  calls  him  a  dramatist,  and  so  he  is  ;  for  with 
the  exception  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor's  '  Philip  Van  Artevelde ' 


7IO  BROWNING 

and  Mr.  Swinburne's  'Both well,'  he  has  written  the  only 
works  within  this  generation  worthy  of  being  called  dramas." 
— G.  B.  Smith. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

1  Now,  don't,  sir  !     Don't  expose  me  !     Just  this  once  ! 
This  was  the  first  and  only  time,  I'll  swear, — 
Look  at  me, — see,  I  kneel, — yes,  by  the  soul 
Of  her  who  hears — (your  sainted  mother,  sir  !) 
All,  except  this  last  accident,  was  truth — 
This  little  kind  of  slip  ! — and  even  this, 
It  was  your  own  wine,  sir,  the  good  champagne 
(I  took  it  for  Catawba,  you're  so  kind), 
Which  put  the  folly  in  my  head  ! 

"  '  Get  up  ?  ' 

You  still  inflict  on  me  that  terrible  face  ? 
You  show  no  mercy  ? — Not  for  her  dear  sake, 
The  sainted  spirit's,  whose  soft  breath  even  now 
Blows  on  my  cheek — (don't  you  feel  something,  sir  ?) 
You'll  tell  ? 

Go  tell,  then  !     Who  the  Devil  cares 
What  such  a  rowdy  chooses  to     ... 

Aie — aie — aie  ! 

Please,  sir  !  your  thumbs  are  through  my  windpipe,  sir  ! 
Ch-ch ! 

"  Well,  sir,  I  hope  you've  done  it  now ! 
O  Lord  !  I  little  thought,  sir,  yesterday, 
When  your  departed  mother  spoke  those  words 
Of  peace  through  me,  and  moved  you,  sir,  so  much, 
You  gave  me — (very  kind  it  was  of  you) 
These  shirt-studs — (better  take  them  back  again, 
Please,  sir) — yes,  little  did  I  think  so  soon 
A  trifle  of  trick,  all  through  a  glass  too  much 
Of  his  own  champagne,  would  change  my  best  of  friends 
Into  an  angry  gentleman  !  " — Mr.  Sludge,  The  Medium. 


BROWNING 


711 


Guendolen.—  "  She's  dead 

Let  me  unlock  her  arms  !  " 

Tresham.—  "  She  threw  them  thus 

About  my  neck  and  blessed  me,  and  then  died. 
You'll  let  them  stay  now,  Guendolen  !  " 

Austin.—  "  Leave  her 

And  look  to  him  !     What  ails  you,  Thorold  ?  " 

Guendolen.—  "  White 

As  she — and  whiter  !     Austin — quick — this  side  !  " 

Austin. — "  A  froth  is  oozing  thro'  his  clenched  teeth — 
Both  lips,  where  they're  not  bitten  thro',  are  black  ! 
Speak,  dearest  Thorold  !  " 

Tresham. —  "  Something  does  weigh  down 

My  neck  besides  her  weight  ;  thanks  ;  I  should  fall 
But  for  you,  Austin,  I  believe  ! — there,  there — 
'Twill  pass  away  soon  ! — Ah— I  had  forgotten — 
I  am  dying." 

Guendolen.—         "  Thorold— Thorold— why  was  this  ?  " 

Tresham. — "  I  said,  just  as  I  drank  the  poison  off, 
The  earth  would  be  no  longer  earth  to  me, 
The  life  out  of  all  life  was  gone  from  me  ! 
There  are  blind  ways  provided,  the  foredone, 
Heart-weary  player  in  this  pageant  world 
Drops  out  by  letting  the  main  masque  defile 
By  the  conspicuous  portal  : — I  am  through — 
Just  through  !— " — A  Blot  on  the  'Scutcheon. 

"  You,  now,  so  kind  here,  all  you  Florentines, 

What  is  it  in  your  eyes    .    .    .    those  lips,  those  brows    .    . 

Nobody  spoke  it    ...     yet  I  know  it  well ! — 

Come  now— this  battle  saves  you,  all's  at  end, 

Your  use  of  me  is  o'er,  for  good,  for  evil — 

Come  now,  what's  done  against  me,  while  I  speak, 

In  Florence  ? l   Come  !  I  feel  it  in  my  blood, 

My  eyes,  my  hair,  a  voice  is  in  my  ear 

That  spite  of  all  this  smiling  and  kind  speech 

You  are  betraying  me  !     What  is  it  you  do  ? 

Have  it  your  way,  and  think  my  use  is  over  ; 

That  you  are  saved  and  may  throw  off  the  mask — 

Have  it  my  way,  and  think  more  work  remains 


712  BROWNING 

Which  I  could  do — so  show  you  fear  me  not, 

Or  prudent  be,  or  generous,  as  you  choose, 

But  tell  me — tell  me  what  I  refused  to  know 

At  noon,  lest  heart  should  fail  me  !     Well  ?     That  letter  ? 

My  fate  is  known  at  Florence  !     What  is  it  ?  " — Luria. 

12.  Mastery  of  Rhyme.—  "  There  is  no  such  extrava- 
gant and  out-of-the-way  word  in  the  language  that  Browning 
will  not  find  you  a  rhyme  for,  if  not  in  one  word,  then  in 
two,  three,  or  four  ;  and  if  not  in  one  language  then  in 
another. ' '  — Roden  Noel. 

"  In  one  very  important  matter,  that  of  rhyme,  he  is  per- 
haps the  greatest  master  of  our  language  ;  in  single  and  double, 
in  simple  and  grotesque  alike,  he  succeeds  in  fitting  rhyme  to 
rhyme  with  a  perfection  which  I  have  never  found  in  any  other 
poet  of  any  age." — John  Addington  Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  I  think  I  gave  you  as  good  ! 

'  That  foreign  fellow, — who  can  know 
How  she  pays,  in  a  tuneful  mood, 
For  his  tuning  her  that  piano  ? ' 

"  Could  you  say  so,  and  never  say 

(  Suppose  we  join  hands  and  fortunes, 
And  I  fetch  her  from  over  the  way, 

Her,  piano,  and  long  tunes  and  short  tunes  ? ' 

"  But  you  meet  the  Prince  at  the  Board, 

I'm  queen  myself  at  bals-pare, 
I've  married  a  rich  old  lord, 
And  you're  dubbed  knight  and  an  R.A." 

—  Youth  and  Art. 

"  But  where  I  begin  my  own  narration 
Is  a  little  after  I  took  my  station 
To  breathe  the  fresh  air  from  the  balcony, 
And,  having  in  those  days  a  falcon  eye, 


BROWNING  713 

To  follow  the  hunt  thro*  the  open  country, 

From  where  the  bushes  thinlier  crested 

The  hillocks,  to  a  plain  where's  not  one  tree  : — 

When,  in  a  moment,  my  ear  was  arrested 

By — was  it  singing,  or  was  it  saying, 

Or  a  strange  musical  instrument  playing 

In  the  chamber  ? — and  to  be  certain 

I  pushed  the  lattice,  pulled  the  curtain." 

—  The  Flight  of  the  Duchess. 

11  But  the  most  turned  in  yet  more  abruptly 
From  a  certain  squalid  knot  of  alleys, 
Where  the  town's  bad  blood  once  slept  corruptly, 
Which  now  the  little  chapel  rallies 
And  leads  into  day  again — its  priestliness 
Lending  itself  to  hide  their  beastliness 
So  cleverly  (thanks  in  part  to  the  mason), 
And  putting  so  cheery  a  whitewashed  face  on 
Those  neophytes  too  much  in  lack  of  it, 
That,  where  you  cross  the  common  as  I  did, 
And  meet  the  party  thus  presided, 
'  Mount  Zion '  with  Love-lane  at  the  back  of  it, 
They  front  you  as  little  disconcerted 
As,  bound  for  the  hills,  her  fate  averted, 
And  her  wicked  people  made  to  mind  him, 
Lot  might  have  marched  with  Gomorrah  behind  him." 
—  Christmas -Eve  and  Easter- Day. 


WHITTIER,  1807-1892 

Biographical  Outline. — John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  born 
December  17,  1807,  in  the  East  Parish  of  Haverhill,  Mass.; 
both  parents  strict  Quakers ;  father  a  farmer  of  supposed  Hu- 
guenot descent,  living  far  from  any  neighbor  and  far  from  any 
school ;  Whittier  works  as  a  boy  on  his  father's  farm,  where, 
through  insufficient  clothing  and  other  unwise  methods  of 
"  toughening"  then  in  vogue  among  New  England  farmers, 
he  sows  the  seeds  of  lifelong  ill  health ;  until  his  nineteenth 
year  his  only  education  is  obtained  at  a  district  school,  which 
is  open  but  a  small  part  of  each  year  ;  his  first  literary  inspi- 
ration comes  from  Burns,  through  the  medium  of  a  travelling 
Scotch  pedler,  and  from  Scott ;  as  a  school-boy  he  used  to 
cover  his  slate  with  original  rhymes  instead  of  sums  ;  during 
his  early  youth  he  writes  much  verse,  but  his  father  discour- 
ages the  son's  "  foolish  waste  of  time  over  his  day-dreams  ;  " 
his  first  published  poem,  "The  Exile's  Departure,"  was  con- 
tributed anonymously,  in  1826,  to  the  Free  Press,  then  re- 
cently established  in  Newburyport  by  William  Lloyd  Garri- 
son ;  the  merit  of  the  poem  is  recognized  by  Garrison,  who 
discovers  its  authorship,  and,  without  invitation,  visits  Whittier 
on  his  father's  farm  ;  he  finds  the  young  poet  hoeing  corn  and 
clad  so  poorly  and  meagrely  that  he  at  first  declines  to  be  pre- 
sented to  the  young  city  editor,  but  afterward  yields  to  the 
importunities  of  his  sister  Elizabeth  ;  Garrison  declares  that 
Whittier  "  bids  fair  to  become  another  Bernard  Barton,"  and 
urges  him  to  obtain  a  better  education  ;  Whittier's  father  is  not 
pleased  with  the  idea,  as  he  is  unable  to  aid  his  son,  but  the 
young  poet  learns  from  one  of  his  father's  farm -laborers  the  art 
of  making  ladies'  slippers,  and  thus  soon  earns  money  enough  to 


WHITTIER  715 

pay  for  his  board  and  tuition  for  six  months  at  the  then  newly 
established  academy  at  Haverhill ;  in  May,  1827,  soon  after 
entering  this  school,  he  writes,  by  invitation,  an  ode  to  be 
sung  at  the  dedication  of  the  new  academy  building ;  from 
1826  to  1830  he  contributes  to  the  Essex  Gazette  several 
poems,  some  of  which  are  promptly  plagiarized  by  city  jour- 
nals ;  two  terms  of  six  months  each  at  the  Haverhill  Academy 
constitute  Whittier's  "  higher  education  ;  "  in  the  winter  of 
1827-28  he  has  his  first  and  only  experience  as  a  teacher, 
taking  charge  of  a  district  school  in  West  Amesbury,  near 
Merrimac. 

Late  in  1828  Whittier  is  offered,  through  Garrison,  the 
editorship  of  the  Philanthropist,  a  Boston  journal — the  first 
temperance  paper  ever  published — and  he  begins  his  editorial 
work  there  January  i,  1829  ;  after  nine  months  in  the  Boston 
printing-office  he  is  recalled  to  the  home-farm  by  his  father's 
illness,  and  he  remains  there  till  his  father's  death  in  January, 
1830,  meantime  contributing  much  prose  and  verse  to  various 
periodicals  ;  in  1832,  on  the  nomination  of  Geo.  D.  Prentice, 
Whittier  is  made  editor  of  the  New  England  Review,  pub- 
lished at  Hartford  ;  he  accepts  the  position,  but  ill  health 
soon  compels  him  to  resign  it  and  to  return  to  the  farm-home; 
between  1829  and  1832  he  writes  over  one  hundred  poems  ; 
in  the  spring  of  1833,  while  still  carrying  on  the  farm,  he 
writes  and  publishes  at  his  own  expense  his  great  prose  pam- 
phlet "  Justice  and  Expediency  " — a  step  that  marks  specifi- 
cally Whittier's  adoption  of  Abolition  tenets;  this  pamphlet 
was  reprinted  and  scattered  broadcast  by  other  Abolitionists, 
and  became  decidedly  the  most  influential  paper  of  that  decade 
for  the  advancement  of  the  anti-slavery  cause ;  most  of  the 
poems  now  published  in  Whittier's  complete  works  under  the 
title  "  Voices  of  Freedom  "  were  written  between  1833  and 
1847,  and  were  contributed  to  various  journals  ;  he  is  a  dele- 
gate to  the  first  national  anti-slavery  convention,  in  Decem- 
ber, 1833,  a  member  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  in 


WHITTIER 

1834-35,  and  refuses  a  re-election  for  1835-36  ;  late  in  1835 
he  narrowly  escapes  being  mobbed  for  his  anti-slavery  views 
at  Concord,  N.  H. 

In  the  spring  of  1836  the  Haverhill  farm  is  sold,  and  the 
poet  buys  a  cottage  at  Amesbury,  Mass.,  which  remains  his 
home  during  the  rest  of  his  life;  in  1840,  and  for  several 
years  at  that  period,  Whittier  was  practically  the  political 
leader  of  his  congressional  district,  and  was  able  to  dictate  to 
Caleb  Gushing  the  conditions  (relating  to  Cushing's  attitude 
toward  slavery)  on  which  he  might  be  re-elected  to  Congress ; 
in  1836  he  publishes  "  Mogg  Megone  "  in  pamphlet  form  at 
Boston — a  poem  that  he  afterward  endeavored  vainly  to  sup- 
press;  in  1837  he  is  in  New  York  City,  acting  as  one  of  the 
secretaries  of  the  American  Anti-Slavery  Society ;  in  March, 
1838,  he  becomes  the  responsible  editor  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Freeman,  before  edited  by  Benjamin  Lundy  under  the  name 
of  the  National  Enquirer,  and  he  holds  this  relation  till  1840, 
though  he  is  frequently  compelled  by  ill  health  to  return  to 
Amesbury,  sending  thence  by  mail  his  contributions  to  the 
Freeman  ;  when,  in  1841,  the  pro-slavery  mob  burned  Penn- 
sylvania Hall,  the  famous  building  in  which  was  the  office  of 
the  Freeman,  he  saved  his  private  papers  at  great  personal 
risk,  and  the  next  day  calmly  issued  the  Freeman  from  another 
office  ;  during  an  absence  of  Whittier  at  Amesbury  in  Novem- 
ber, 1838,  the  agent  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Society  of  Pennsyl- 
vania issued  a  volume  of  his  poems  amounting  to  one  hundred 
and  fifty  pages  ;  of  the  fifty  poems  in  this  collection,  none  were 
published  in  the  "  Legends  of  New  England,"  and  only  eleven 
of  them  are  to  be  found  in  the  complete  edition  of  Whittier's 
works  published  fifty  years  afterward ;  the  title-page  of  this 
first  authorized  collection  of  Whittier's  poems,  which  he  had 
collected  during  the  summer  of  1838,  bears  the  text  from 
Ecclesiastes  iv.  i  :  "So  I  returned  and  considered  all  the 
oppressions  that  are  done  under  the  sun ;  and,  behold,  the 
tears  of  such  as  were  oppressed,  and  they  had  no  comforter ; 


'HITTIER  717 

and  on  the  side  of  their  oppressors  there  was  power ;  but  they 
had  no  comforter;  "  in  July,  1839,  increasing  ill  health  com- 
pels him  to  give  up  his  journalistic  duties,  and  he  makes  a 
tour  of'Western  Pennsylvania,  seeking  health  and  working  for 
the  an  ti -slavery  cause  wherever  he  goes  ;  later  he  arranges  for 
petitions  from  every  part  of  his  congressional  district,  calling 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and 
the  restriction  of  the  slave-trade ;  these  petitions  are  denied 
under  a  new  congressional  rule,  whose  author  Whittier  gives  a 
terrible  poetic  castigation  in  the  Freeman  in  January,  1839; 
in  June,  1839,  he  is  present  at  a  national  anti-slavery  conven- 
tion in  Albany,  and  afterward  visits  Saratoga  at  the  height  of 
the  season  as  "a  laughing  philosopher;  "  thence  by  way  of 
Newport  and  New  York  to  Amesbury,  where  he  remains  till 
October,  1839,  when  he  is. again  at  his  desk  in  Philadelphia. 
In  February,  1840,  his  physician  declares  that  Whittier  is 
affected  with  a  serious  heart  trouble  and  that  he  must  give  up 
his  editorial  work  ;  he  accordingly  publishes  his  valedictory, 
February  20,  1840,  and  returns  to  Amesbury  ;  his  continued  ill 
health  compels  him  to  give  up  an  intended  visit  to  the  World's 
Anti-Slavery  Convention  in  London  during  the  summer  of 
1840;  he  remains  at  Amesbury  till  April,  1841,  when  he 
goes  to  New  York,  meets  Joseph  Sturges,  the  English  philan- 
thropist, then  visiting  this  country,  and,  with  Sturges,  visits 
Philadelphia,  Wilmington,  Baltimore,  and  Washington  ;  while 
in  Baltimore  they  visit  several  slave-pens;  Whittier  entertains 
Sturges  at  Amesbury  during  the  summer  of  1841,  and  on  his 
departure  for  England  in  August,  Sturges  leaves  with  Lewis 
Tappan  $1,000,  to  be  used  by  Whittier  in  travelling  or  in 
any  other  way  he  may  choose;  in  October,  1842,  Whittier 
receives  from  Lowell,  then  doing  his  first  journalistic  work  as 
editor  of  a  new  Boston  magazine  called  the  Pioneer,  a  request 
for  a  poem,  and  sends  him  the  lines  entitled  "  To  a  Friend 
on  his  Return  from  Europe;"  Whittier's  poem  "Massa- 
chusetts to  Virginia,"  first  published  in  the  Liberator \  Janu- 


71 8  WHITTIER 

ary  27,  1843,  without  his  name,  was  inspired  by  the  trial  of 
a  fugitive  slave  in  Boston,  and  was  at  once  recognized  as 
Whittier's  work;  in  May,  1843,  Ticknor  &  Fields  issue  a 
volume  of  his  poems  entitled  "  Lays  of  My  Home  and  Other 
Poems" — the  first  of  his  published  works  from  which  Whit- 
tier  realized  any  financial  return,  as  all  of  his  poems  previ- 
ously published  had  been  sold  for  the  benefit  of  "  the  cause;  " 
all  the  twenty-three  poems  in  this  volume  have  been  retained 
in  the  poet's  complete  works  ;  the  first  four  of  his  "  Songs  of 
Labor  "  were  contributed  to  the  Democratic  Review  in  1845 
and  1846;  the  rest  appeared  in  the  National  Era  under 
Whittier's  editorship;  in  March,  1844,  at  the  request  of 
Lowell,  he  wrote  "Texas"  and  "The  Voice  of  New  Eng- 
land." 

For  several  weeks  during  1844  Whittier  resides  in 
Boston,  editing  the  Middlesex  Sentinel ;  for  about  two  years 
at  this  period  he  was  also  virtually  editor  of  the  Essex 
(Amesbury)  Transcript,  though  his  name  did  not  appear  as 
editor;  he  wrote  "in  a  beautiful  flowing  hand,  with  seldom 
an  emendation  or  any  interlining;"  his  series  of  papers 
entitled  "  The  Stranger  in  Lowell "  were  first  printed  in  the 
Transcript  and  afterward  appeared  in  book  form  ;  during  the 
year  1845  he  aids  in  the  campaign  of  the  Free  Soil  Party 
with  vigorous  satirical  verse,  much  of  it  written  anonymously  ; 
when  the  National  Era  is  established  at  Washington  as  the 
leading  anti-slavery  organ,  in  1847,  Whittier  becomes  assist- 
ant or  corresponding  editor,  and  continues  to  hold  this  posi- 
tion till  1860  ;  his  relation  to  the  paper  enables  him  to 
retain  his  residence  at  Amesbury,  where  the  ministrations  of 
his  mother  and  sister  contribute  much  to  the  preservation  of 
his  health  ;  he  writes  "  Randolph  of  Roanoke  "  in  January, 
1847,  and  "The  Pine  Tree  "  in  September  following;  from 
1847  to  1859  the  Era  contained  over  eighty  of  Whittier's 
poems,  including  "  Barclay  of  Ury,"  "  The  Angels  of  Buena 
Vista,"  "Ichabod,"  "Maud  Muller,"  and  "The  Witch's 


WHITTIER  719 

Daughter,"  but  the  bulk  of  his  work  during  these  years 
was  done  in  prose ;  his  most  notable  prose  work  of  this  period 
was  "  Margaret  Smith's  Journal,"  really  an  historical  novel, 
first  published  serially  in  the  Era  and  afterward  reprinted  in 
book  form  by  Ticknor  &  Fields,  in  1849;  Whittier  fre- 
quently filled  from  eight  to  ten  pages  of  a  single  issue  of  the 
Era  with  his  own  prose  contributions;  in  1849  his  poems 
are  issued  in  a  fine  illustrated  octavo  volume,  which  passes 
rapidly  through  three  editions,  and  brings  to  Whittier  a  con- 
siderable financial  return ;  in  1850  another  volume  appears 
containing  the  "Songs  of  Labor"  and  twenty-one  mis- 
cellaneous poems  ;  in  1850  Whittier  also  publishes  his  prose 
volume  entitled  "Old  Portraits  and  Modern  Sketches;" 
during  1850  also,  against  Sumner's  will,  Whittier  persuades 
him  to  accept  the  Free  Soil  nomination  for  United  States 
Senator — a  nomination  that  results  in  an  election,  and  so  is 
the  beginning  of  Sumner's  career  as  a  statesman  ;  during  the 
summer  of  1850  Whittier  entertains  Lowell  and  Bayard 
Taylor  at  Amesbury  ;  he  is  severely  ill  early  in  1851;  he 
contributes  "Moloch  in  State  Street "  to  the  Era  in  May, 
1852  ;  "  The  Panorama,"  written  in  1855,  was  first  published 
in  1856  in  a  small  volume  containing  also  the  poems  entitled 
"A  Memory,"  "Burns,"  "Tauler,"  "  The  Barefoot  Boy," 
and  "  The  Kansas  Emigrants ;  "  during  1856  he  first  takes  a 
public  stand  in  favor  of  woman  suffrage,  and  supports  Fre- 
mont, writing  for  the  campaign  the  poems  entitled  "  What  of 
the  Day  ?  "  "  The  Pass  of  the  Sierra,"  "  To  Pennsylvania," 
"  A  Song  for  the  Time,"  and  that  beginning  "Beneath  thy 
Skies,  November;"  "The  Mayflower"  was  also  written  in 
1856;  in  1857  Whittier  loses  his  mother,  to  whom  he  had 
been  intensely  devoted,  and  Ticknor  &  Fields  publish,  at  his 
request,  the  complete  "blue  and  gold  "  edition  of  his  poems; 
he  urges  the  omission  of  "  Mogg  Megone  "  from  this  edition, 
but  Fields  insists  on  retaining  it;  Whittier,  however,  insists 
on  omitting  the  poems  entitled  "  The  Response,"  "  Stanzas 


720  WHITT1ER 

for  the  Times,  1844,"  "Address  at  the  Opening  of  Penn- 
sylvania Hall,"  and  "The  Album;  "  the  second  and  third 
of  this  list  of  poems  were  retained  in  the  edition  of  1888. 

In  1857  Whittier  aids  in  organizing  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
and  at  the  editorial  rooms  in  Boston  he  frequently  meets 
Emerson,  Mrs.  Stowe,  Lowell,  Theodore  Parker,  Holmes, 
Prescott,  Motley,  Norton,  and  other  eminent  contributors, 
although,  because  of  his  delicate  health,  he  is  seldom  present 
at  any  of  the  famous  monthly  dinners  given  by  the  Atlantic  ; 
among  his  early  poems  in  the  Atlantic  are  the  one  on  the 
laying  of  the  first  ocean  cable,  "The  Pipes  at  Lucknow," 
and  "  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride;  "  in  1860  he  publishes  a  volume 
entitled  "Home  Ballads,  Poems,  and  Lyrics,"  opening  with 
"  The  Witch's  Daughter,"  afterward  called  "  Mabel  Martin," 
and  containing  also  "The  Prophecy  of  Samuel  Sewell," 
"The  Preacher,"  "To  G.  B.C.,"  "Brown  of  Ossawattomie," 
"From  Perugia,"  "The  Peace  of  Europe,"  and  "The 
Prisoners  of  Naples;"  in  January,  1861,  he  voices  his  pro- 
test against  war  in  the  poem  "A  Word  for  the  Hour;  "  in 
February,  1862,  he  publishes  in  the  Atlantic  his  "  Negro 
Boat  Song  at  Port  Royal;  "  during  the  early  years  of  the 
war  he  writes  also  "Thy  Will  be  Done,"  "The  Battle 
Autumn  of  1862,"  "  Ein  Feste  Burg  ist  Unser  Gott"  and 
"  The  Watchers ;"  in  1863  he  publishes  a  volume  entitled 
"In  War  Time  and  Other  Poems,"  including  those  just 
mentioned  and  "  Amy  Wentworth,"  "Mountain  Pictures," 
"The  Laurels,"  and  "  Barbara  Frietchie ;"  "  Barbara  Friet- 
chie  "  first  appears  in  the  Atlantic  in  September,  1863,  and 
Whittier  receives  for  the  manuscript  $150;  during  the  same 
month  he  commends  the  famous  "emancipation  proclama- 
tion" of  Fremont ;  on  receiving,  in  January,  1864,  $340  as 
his  first  royalties  on  the  volume  "  In  War  Time,"  he  writes, 
"  It  makes  me  rich  as  Crcesus  ;  "  his  sister  Elizabeth  dies 
September  3,  1864,  and  he  writes,  "  The  great  motive  of  life 
seems  lost;"  three  weeks  later  he  sends  to  the  Atlantic 


WIIITTIER  721 

"The  Vanishers;"  in  1864  he  publishes  "The  Mantle  of 
St.  John  de  Matha  "  and  in  1865  "  The  Changeling,"  both 
in  the  Atlantic ;  on  hearing  of  the  passage  of  the  constitu- 
tional amendment  abolishing  slavery  in  the  United  States,  in 
February,  1865,  he  sends  to  the  Independent  "  Laus  Deo" 

He  begins  "  Snow  Bound" — really  a  memorial  tribute  to 
his  mother  and  sister — in  the  summer  of  1865,  and  writes  to 
Fields,  "  If  I  ever  finish,  I  hope  and  trust  it  will  be  good;  " 
he  sends  it  to  Fields,  October  3,  1865,  but  Fields  returns  it 
with  suggestions  for  several  changes,  most  of  which  Whittier 
adopts  ;  the  poem  is  published  early  in  1866,  and  Whittier's 
share  of  the  profits  of  the  first  issue  are  $io,ooc  ;  between 
1832  and  1865,  besides  an  enormous  amount  of  prose,  he  had 
written  nearly  three  hundred  poems,  one-third  of  them  relat- 
ing directly  or  indirectly  to  slavery  ;  in  July,  1866,  he  writes 
to  a  friend:  "If  my  health  allowed  me  to  write,  I  could 
make  money  easily  now,  as  my  anti-slavery  reputation  does 
not  injure  me  in  the  least  at  the  present  time.  For  twenty 
years  I  was  shut  out  from  the  favor  of  booksellers  and  maga- 
zine editors,  but  I  was  enabled  by  rigid  economy  to  live  in 
spite  of  them  and  to  see  the  end  of  the  infernal  institution 
that  proscribed  me;  thank  God  for  it!"  he  begins  the 
final  arrangement  of  "  The  Tent  on  the  Beach  "  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1866,  but  ill  health  compels  him  to  lay  it  aside;  in 
September,  1866,  he  sends  to  Mrs.  Fields  the  little  poem 
"  Our  Master  ;  "  during  the  same  year  appears  a  two-volume 
edition  of  his  prose  works  ;  he  completes  "  The  Tent  on  the 
Beach  "  in  December,  and  it  appears  in  February,  1867,  and 
sells,  at  first,  at  the  rate  of  one  thousand  copies  a  day ;  about 
this  time  Whittier  describes  himself  as  "  a  bundle  of  nerves 
for  pain  to  experiment  on  ;  "  he  writes  "  The  Palatine  "in 
August,  1867,  and  meets  Dickens  in  Boston  during  the  fol- 
lowing December,  though  ill  health  prevents  him  from  at- 
tending the  readings  of  the  novelist ;  he  is  very  ill  during  the 
winter  of  1867-68. 
46 


722  WHITTIER 

An  illustrated  edition  of  Whittier's  poems  is  published  in 
1868  under  the  title  "Among  the  Hills  and  Other  Poems;  " 
"  The  Clear  Vision  "  appears  in  the  Atlantic  in  April,  1868  ; 
the  poem  entitled  "Among  the  Hills"  first  appeared  in  the 
Atlantic  in  June,  1868,  under  the  title  of  "The  Wife:  An  Idyll 
of  Bearchamp  Water,"  and  was  but  half  as  long  as  in  its  pres- 
ent form;  during  1869  and  1870  Whittier  writes  "Howard 
at  Atlanta,"  "Marguerite,"  "The  Pageant,"  and  "In  School 
Days ;"  during  middle  and  later  life  he  could  not  write  or  read 
for  half  an  hour  continuously  without  suffering, a  severe  head- 
ache— a  fact  that  accounts  for  much  of  Whittier's  seeming 
diffidence  on  public  occasions  ;  he  was  also  color-blind  and 
in  later  life  somewhat  deaf;  in  1871  he  publishes  a  volume 
entitled  "Miriam  and  Other  Poems;"  in  1871  he  edits 
"John  Woolman's  Journal"  and  a  collection  of  juvenile 
poems  called  "  Child  Life  in  Song,"  and  translates  into  Eng- 
lish verse  the  Danish  story  of  "  Volmer  and  Elsie;  "  in  1872 
he  publishes  "  The  Pennsylvania  Pilgrim  "  in  a  volume  with 
"  Volmer  and  Elsie  "  and  a  dozen  other  poems  ;  in  August  of 
this  year  he  receives  a  severe  shock  when  his  house  is  struck 
by  lightning;  during  1872  and  1873  he  labors  earnestly  to 
secure  the  rescinding  of  the  legislative  enactment  censuring 
Sumner  for  favoring  the  return  of  the  Confederate  flags ;  the 
effort  fails  at  first,  but  Whittier  finally  succeeds,  and  the  act 
is  rescinded  ;  late  in  1873  he  writes  the  ode  now  known  as 
"A  Christmas  Carmen,"  and  sends  it  anonymously  to  Gil- 
more,  the  bandmaster  of  the  great  Peace  Jubilee,  who  re- 
jects the  ode;  in  1874  Whittier  writes  but  throws  aside  his 
poem  entitled  "A  Sea  Dream,"  saying  that  it  is  "a  poem 
that  the  world  can  do  without;"  in  its  place  he  sends  to 
the  Atlantic  his  "Golden  Wedding  of  Longwood  ;  "  dur- 
ing 1874  he  also  adds  eighty  lines  to  "The  Witch's  Daugh- 
ter," and  rechristens  it  "  Mabel  Martin  ;  "  early  in  1875  he 
entertains  at  Amesbury  Garrison,  Elizur  Wright,  and  Samuel 
Sewell,  and  speaks  of  the  quartette  as  "four  gray  old  abo- 


WHITTIER  723 

litionists,  dating  back  to  1832;"  he  sends  "Lexington, 
1775,"  to  the  Atlantic  in  March,  1875  ;  during  this  year  he 
also  publishes  the  collection  of  poems  called  "  Hazel  Blos- 
soms/' and  collaborates  with  Lucy  Larcom  in  editing  "  Songs 
of  Three  Centuries;  "  early  in  1876,  after  Bryant,  Lowell,  and 
Holmes  had  declined  to  write  the  hymn  for  the  opening  of 
the  Philadelphia  Centennial  Exposition,  Whittier  yields  to 
importunities  of  his  intimate  friend,  Bayard  Taylor,  and 
writes  the  hymn  for  that  occasion ;  his  niece  Lizzie,  who  had 
been  the  poet's  housekeeper  since  the  death  of  his  sister,  was 
married  in  April,  1876,  and  thereafter  Whittier  made  his 
home  during  a  large  part  of  each  year  with  three  cousins — 
the  Misses  Johnson  and  Miss  Woodman — at  Danvers,  Mass., 
in  a  house  to  which  he  gave  the  name  of  "  Oak  Knoll ;  M  he 
really  spent  but  little  time  at  Amesbury  during  his  later  years, 
but  he  retained  his  citizenship  and  his  property  there;  during 
the  summer  of  1876,  by  special  appointment,  Whittier  meets 
Dom  Pedro,  Emperor  of  Brazil,  who  was  a  warm  admirer  of 
the  Quaker  poet ;  during  his  later  years  Whittier's  favorite 
summer  residence  is  at  the  Bearchamp  House,  at  West  Ossipee, 
N.  H.,  where  he  writes  "Among  the  Hills,"  "  Sunset  on  the 
Bearchamp,"  "Seeking  a  Waterfowl,"  and  "The  Voyage 
of  the  Jettie;  "  he  publishes  "The  Witch  of  Wenham  "  in 
the  Atlantic  in  April,  1876;  in  1877,  in  response  to  tributes 
to  Whittier  on  his  seventieth  birthday,  written  for  the  Liter- 
ary World  by  a  score  of  the  most  eminent  American  writers, 
he  writes  the  sonnet  beginning  "  Beside  the  milestone,  where 
the  level  sun." 

Whittier  remained  an  optimist  till  the  end,  and  wrote  to  a 
friend  in  1881,  "The  Lord  reigns  ;  our  old  planet  is  wheel- 
ing slowly  into  fuller  light.  I  despair  of  nothing  good." 
The  tributes  to  his  fame  and  genius  during  his  later  years 
from  all  classes  of  people  were  both  numerous  and  significant ; 
during  1883  he  publishes  the  volume  called  "  The  Bay  of 
Seven  Islands  and  Other  Poems,"  and  writes  for  the  Atlantic 


724  WHITTIER 

the  poem  "  At  Last ;  "  in  188,5,  at  Tennyson's  request,  Whit- 
tier  writes  the  inscription  for  General  Gordon's  cenotaph  in 
Westminster;  in  1886  he  publishes  a  volume  entitled  "  Saint 
Gregory's  Quest  and  Other  Poems" — sixteen  poems,  nearly 
all  written  after  his  seventy-fifth  year;  during  his  last  three 
years  he  remains  much  at  Amesbury,  saying,  "  I  seem  nearer 
to  my  mother  and  sister  here  ;  "  during  1888  he  revises  the 
proofs  of  his  poems  and  prose  works  for  the  complete  seven- 
volume  "  Riverside  "  edition  of  his  works,  saying,  "  I  have  a 
strong  desire  to  drown  some  of  them  [the  poems]  like  so 
many  kittens  ;  "  during  1890  he  publishes  for  private  circu- 
lation among  his  friends  the  little  volume  of  his  earliest  verses 
entitled  "At  Sundown,"  which  appeared  publicly  two  years 
later;  in  1891  he  writes  to  Holmes  concerning  death,  "I 
await  the  call  with  a  calm  trust  in  the  eternal  goodness;" 
during  1891  he  writes  his  lines  on  Lowell  and  the  poems 
"  The  Birthday  Wreath  "  and  "  Between  the  Gates  ;  "  during 
the  summer  of  1892  he  revises  the  proofs  of  his  volume  "At 
Sundown ;  "  he  suffers  a  paralytic  shock  on  September  3,  1892, 
and  dies  peacefully  at  Hampton  Falls,  N.  H.,  September  7, 
1892,  while  a  relative  recites  his  poem  "At  Last." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY    OF    CRITICISM    ON   WHITTIER. 

Stedman,  E.  C.,  "  Poets  of  America."     Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mif- 

flin  &  Co.,  95-133. 
Underwood,  F.  H.,  "  Biography  of  Whittier."     Boston,  1884,  Osgood, 

v.  index. 
Kennedy,    W.    S.,    "John  G.   Whittier."     New  York,    1892,   Funk  & 

Wagnalls,  v.  index. 
Richardson,  C.  F. ,  "American  Literature."     New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

2:    172-187. 
Whipple,    E.    P.,    "  Essays    and    Reviews."      Boston,    1861,    Ticknor, 

I  :   68-71. 
Whipple,    E.    P.,    "American    Literature."      Boston,    1887,    Ticknor, 

73-75- 
Taylor,  B.,  "Essays  and  Notes."     New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  294-296. 


WHITTIER  .  725 

Pickard,  S.  L.,  "  Life  and  Letters  of  Whittier. "  Boston,  1894,  Hough- 
ton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  2  volumes,  v.  index. 

Wendell,  B.,  "  StelligerL"     New  York,  1893,  Scribner,  146-202. 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Poetical  Works."  Boston,  1890,  Houghton,  Mifflin 
&  Co.,  134,  135,  and  450. 

Mitford,  Miss  M.  R.,  "  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."  New  York, 
Harper,  1851,  334-340. 

Griswold,  R.  W.,  "The  Poets  of  America."  New  York,  1872,  James 
Miller,  389-406. 

May,  S.  J.,  "Some  Recollections."     Boston,  1869,  Fields,  258-267. 

Parton,   J.,  "Some  Noted   Princes,"  etc.     New  York,    1885,   Crowell, 

319-323. 
Bungay,   G.    W.,    "Off-hand   Takings."      New    York,    1854,,    Dewitt, 

v.  .index. 
Gilder,  J.  L.  and  J.  B.,  "Authors  at  Home."     New  York,  1888,  Cas- 

sell,  343-355- 
Claflin,    M.    B.,    "  Personal   Recollections  of   Whittier."     New   York, 

1893,  Crowell,  v.  index. 

Chautauquan,  16  :   299-301  (J.  V.  Cheney). 

Century,  23  :   363-368  (E.  S.  Phelps)  ;   8  :  38-50  (E.  C.  Stedman). 
Cosmopolitan,  16  :  303-306  (C.  F.  Bates). 
McCluris  Magazine,   2:    125-129  (C.   F.    Bates);    7;   114-121    (E.  S. 

Phelps). 

New  England  Magazine,  7 :   275-293  (W.  S.  Kennedy). 
New  World,  2 :  88-103  (J-  W.  Chadwick). 
Good  Words,  28 :   29-34  (F.  H.  Underwood). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  70 :   642-648  (G.  E.  Woodberry) 
Critic,  18:   221,  222  (O.  W.  Holmes);  81  :   307,  308  (J.  H.  Morse). 
Harper's  Magazine,   86:338-357   (A.    Fields);    68:    177-188    (H.    P. 

Spofford). 

Arena,  15  :   376-384  (M.  B.  Claflin)  ;    10 :    153-168  (W.  H.  Savage). 
International  Review,  3:   405-413  (B.  Taylor). 
ScribneSs  Monthly,  18:   569-583  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Appletorfs  Journal,  5  :   431-434  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Lakeside  Monthly,  5  :   365-367  (R.  Collyer). 
Independent,  oft:    1258,  1259(8.  L.  Pickard). 
Dial  (Chicago),  9:    193-196  (M.  B.  Anderson). 

PARTICULAR    CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Idyllic  Flavor — Homely  Beauty. — "Of  our  lead- 
ing poets,  Whittier  was  almost  the  only  one  who  learned  Nat- 


726  WH1TTIER 

tire  by  working  with  her  at  all  seasons,  under  the  sky  and  in 
the  wood  and  field.  .  .  .  While  chanting  in  behalf  of 
every  patriotic  or  human  effort  of  his  time,  he  has  been  the 
truest  singer  of  our  homestead  or  wayside  life,  and  has  rendered 
all  the  legends  of  his  region  into  familiar  verse.  ...  As 
a  bucolic  poet  of  his  own  section,  rendering  its  pastoral  life 
and  aspect,  Whittier  surpasses  all  rivals.  ...  To  read 
his  verse  was  to  recall  the  scent  of  the  clover  and  apple-bloom, 
to  hear  again  the  creak  of  the  well-pole,  the  rattle  of  bars  in  the 
lane — the  sights  and  freshness  of  youth  passing  for  a  moment, 
a  vision  of  peace  over  their  battle-field." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Whittier,  on  the  whole,  has  lived  nearer  the  homely 
heart  and  life  of  his  northern  countrymen  than  any  other 
American  poet  save  Longfellow.  .  .  .  Unvexed  by 
literary  envy  and  oblivious  to  mere  fame,  he  became  the 
laureate  of  the  ocean  beach,  the  inland  lake,  the  little  wood 
flower,  and  the  divine  sky."  —  C.  F.  Richardson. 

"It  is  not  without  perfect  justice  that  '  Snow-Bound  '  takes 
rank  with  <  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night'  and  'The  Deserted 
Village;  '  it  belongs  in  this  group  as  a  faithful  picture  of  hum- 
ble life.  ....  All  his  affection  for  the  soil  on  which  he 
was  born  went  into  it ;  and  no  one  ever  felt  more  deeply  that 
attachment  to  the  region  of  his  birth  which  is  the  great  spring 
of  patriotism.  .  .  .  It  is  the  New  England  home  entire, 
with  its  characteristic  scenes,  its  incidents  of  household  life, 
its  Christian  virtues." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  Like  Burns  and  Cowper,  Whittier  is  distinctively  a  rustic 
poet.  .  .  .  His  idyllic  poetry  savors  of  the  soil  and  is  full 
of  local  allusions.  .  .  .  There  are  trees  and  trees  at  Oak 
Knoll.  .  .  .  The  house  is  of  wood.  ...  In  front 
a  luxuriant  vine  clusters  about  the  eaves.  On  the  front  porch 
a  mocking-bird  and  a  canary-bird  fill  the  green  silence  with 
gushes  of  melody:  and  near  at  hand,  in  his  study  in  the  wing 
of  the  building,  siis  one  with  a  singing  pen  and  listens  to  their 
song.  To  their  song  and  to  the  murmur  of  the  tall  pines  by 


WHITTIER  727 

his  window  he  listens,  then  looks  into  his  heart  and  writes — 
this  sweet-souled  magician — and  craftily  imprisons  between 
the  covers  of  his  books  echoes  of  bird  and  tree  music,  bits  of 
blue  sky,  glimpses  of  green  landscape,  winding  rivers,  and 
idyls  of  the  snow — all  suffused  and  interfused  with  a  glowing 
atmosphere  of  human  and  divine  love." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

11  Throughout  the  work  of  his  sixty-seven  years  one  feels 
with  growing  admiration  a  constant  simplicity  of  feeling  and 
of  phrase,  as  pure  as  the  country  air  he  loved  to  breathe." 
— Barrett  Wendell. 

"  So  far  as  flavor  of  the  soil  went,  he  was  far  beyond  Long- 
fellow or  Holmes  or  Lowell." — T.  W.  Higginson. 

"  The  poet  himself  calls  the  scenes  in  'Snow-Bound'  Flem- 
ish pictures  ;  and  it  is  true  they  have  much  of  the  homely 
fidelity  of  Teniers,  but  they  are  far  more  than  literal  represen- 
tations. The  scenes  glow  with  ideal  beauty — all  the  more  for 
their  bucolic  tone.  The  works  and  ways  of  the  honest  people 
are  almost  photographically  revealed." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  The  birds  which  carolled  over  his  head,  the  flowers 
which  grew  under  his  feet,  were  as  poetic  as  those  to  which 
the  Scottish  ploughman  had  given  perennial  interest.  Burns 
taught  him  to  detect  the  beautiful  in  the  common." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  This  exquisite  poem  ["  Snow-Bound  "]  has  no  prototype  in 
English  literature,  unless  Burns's  "  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  " 
be  one,  and  it  will  be  long,  I  fear,  before  it  has  a  companion- 
piece.  It  can  be  fully  appreciated  only  by  those  who  are  New 
England  born  and  on  whose  heads  the  snows  of  fifty  or  sixty 
winters  have  fallen." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"There  is  no  custom  of  the  country,  common  and  simple 
as  it  may  be,  sugar-camp  and  sleigh-ride,  husking,  apple-par- 
ing, and  the  telling  of  the  bees,  that  he  does  not  fling  his 
charm  about  it." — Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 


WH1TTIER 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  was  the  pleasant  harvest-time, 
When  cellar-bins  are  closely  stowed, 
And  garrets  bend  beneath  their  load, 

"  And  the  old  swallow-haunted  barns — 
Brown-gabled,  long,  and  full  of  seams 
Through  which  the  moted  sunlight  streams, 

"  And  winds  blow  freshly  in,  to  shake 
The  red  plumes  of  the  roosted  cocks, 
And  the  loose  hay-mow's  scented  locks — 

"  Are  filled  with  summer's  ripened  stores, 
Its  odorous  grass  and  barley  sheaves, 
From  their  low  scaffolds  to  their  eaves." 

—  The  Witch's  Daughter. 

"  We  fished  her  little  trout-brook,  knew 
What  flowers  in  wood  and  meadow  grew, 
What  sunny  hillsides,  autumn-brown, 
She  climbed  to  shake  the  ripe  nuts  down, 
Saw  where  in  sheltered  cove  and  bay 
The  ducks'  black  squadron  anchored  lay, 
And  heard  the  wild  geese  calling  loud 
Beneath  the  gray  November  cloud." — Snow- Bound. 

"  Here  is  the  place  ;  right  over  the  hill 

Runs  the  path  I  took  ; 
You  can  see  the  gap  in  the  old  wall  still, 

And  the  stepping-stones  in  the  shallow  brook. 

*'  There  is  the  house,  with  the  gate  red-barred, 

And  the  poplars  tall  ; 

And  the  barn's  brown  length,  and  the  cattle-yard, 
And  the  white  horns  tossing  above  the  wall. 

"  There  are  the  bee-hives  ranged  in  the  sun ; 

And  down  by  the  brink 

Of  the  brook  are  her  poor  flowers,  weed-o'errun, 
Pansy  and  daffodil,  rose  and  pink." 

—  Telling  the  Bees. 


WHITTIER  729 

2.    Moral    Energy  —  Vehemence  —  Intensity.  — 

At  first,  the  reader  is  inclined  to  think  vehemence  the  most 
essential  quality  of  Whittier's  style  ;  but  a  more  careful  reflec- 
tion will  convince  him  that  the  critics  are  right  in  maintain- 
ing that  his  idyls  will  live  long  after  his  trumpet-blasts  against 
slavery  have  been  forgotten. 

"  What  is  the  great  central  element  in  our  poet's  character, 
if  it  is  not  that  deep,  never-smouldering  moral  fervor,  that 
unquenchable  love  of  freedom,  that 

'  Hate  of  tyranny,  intense 
And  hearty  in  its  vehemence,' 

which,  mixed  with  the  beauty  and  melody  of  his  soul,  gives  to 
his  pages  a  delicate  glow  as  of  gold-hot  iron  ;  which  crowned 
him  the  laureate  of  freedom  in  his  day,  and  imparts  to  his 
utterances  the  manly  ring  of  the  prose  of  Milton  and  Hugo 
and  the  poetry  of  Byron,  Swinburne,  and  Whitman — all  poets 
of  freedom  like  himself  ?  He  is  occasionally  nerved 

to  almost  superhuman  effort ;  it  is  the  battle-axe  of  Richard 
thundering  at  the  gates  of  Front  de  Bceuf.  .  .  .  Never 
ceasing  to  express  his  high-born  soul  in  burning  invective 
and  scathing  satire  against  the  oppressor.  .  .  .  Another 
powerful  group  of  these  anti-slavery  poems  is  constituted  by  the 
scornful  mock-congratulatory  productions ;  such  as  the  '  Hun- 
ters of  Men,'  '  Clerical  Oppressors,'  'The  Yankee  Girl,'  'A 
Sabbath  Scene,'  '  Lines  suggested  by  Reading  a  State  Paper 
wherein  the  Higher  Law  is  Invoked  to  Sustain  the  Lower 
One,'  and  'The  Pastoral  Letter.'  The  sentences  in  these 
stanzas  cut  like  knives  and  sting  like  shot." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 
"  Whittier  had  always  lived  in  a  region  of  moral  ideas,  and 
this  anti -slavery  inspiration  inflamed  his  moral  ideas  into 
moral  passion  and  moral  wrath.  If  Garrison  may  be  con- 
sidered the  prophet  of  anti-slavery  and  Phillips  its  orator 
and  Mrs.  Stowe  its  novelist  and  Sumner  its  statesman,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  Whittier  was  its  poet.  Quaker  as  he 


73°  WHITTIER 

was,  his  martial  lyrics  had  something  of  the  energy  of  the 
primitive  bard  urging  on  hosts  to  battle.  Every  word  was  a 
blow.  ...  He  roused,  condensed,  and  elevated  the 
public  sentiment  against  slavery.  The  poetry  was  as  genuine 
as  the  wrath  was  terrific,  and  many  a  political  time-server  who 
was  proof  against  Garrison's  hottest  denunciations  and  Phillips's 
most  stinging  invectives,  quailed  before  Whittier's  smiting 
rhymes.  .  .  .  He  seems,  in  some  of  his  lyrics,  to  pour 
out  his  blood  with  his  lines.  There  is  a  rush  of  passion  in  his 
verse  which  sweeps  everything  along  with  it.  ...  The 
strong  qualities  of  his  mind,  acting  at  the  suggestion  of  con- 
science, produce  a  kind  of  military  morality  which  uses  all 
the  deadly  arms  of  verbal  warfare.  .  .  .  His  invective  is 
merciless  and  undistinguishing ;  he  almost  screams  with  rage 
and  indignation." — E.  P.  Whipple. 
"  And  he's  prone  to  repeat  his  own  lyrics  sometimes  ; 

Not  his  best,  though ;  for  those  are  struck  off  at  white  heats 
When  the  heart  in  his  breast  like  a  trip-hammer  beats, 
And  could  ne'er  be  repeated  again  any  more 
Than  they  could  have  been  carefully  plotted  before." 

— James  Russell  Lowell. 

"That  one  [poem]  entitled  simply  «  Stanzas,'  has  an  almost 
terrible  force.  .  .  .  Evidently  written  in  a  white  heat, 
the  language  is  at  once  terse  and  vehement,  and  the  sound  of 
the  lines  is  like  the  clashing  of  swords.  The  thoughts  and 
emotions  are  sublime,  as  happens  only  in  the  most  exalted  state 
of  the  creative  soul.  Such  a  poem  could  never  have  been  com- 
posed. It  is  as  difficult  to  quote  from  it  as  to  give  a  segment 
of  a  moving  wave  of  lava.  .  .  .  What  a  pleasure — and 
what  a  surprise — it  would  be  to  see  such  vigorous  strokes  in  a 
magazine  to-day.  .  .  .  It  ["  Ichabod  "]  contains  more 
storages  of  electric  energy  than  any  we  remember  in  our 
time.  .  .  .  The  reply  of  Whittier  ["The  Pastoral  Letter"] 
is  filled  with  grim  sarcasm  and  indignant  invective.  .  .  . 
The  lines  hit  like  rapier  thrusts." — F.  H.  Underwood. 


WHITTIER  731 

"  Peaceful  thy  message,  yet  for  struggling  right — 

When  slavery's  gauntlet  in  our  face  was  flung — 
While  timid  weaklings  watched  the  dubious  fight 
No  herald's  challenge  more  defiant  rung." 

—Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

"  Nothing  can  exceed,  nothing  can  equal,  the  wild  power 
of  some  of  these  songs  ["  Voices  of  Freedom  "],  now  soaring 
in  scorn,  now  writhing  in  angry  shame,  rising  with  indignant 
outcry,  burning  in  fiery  eloquence ;  and  all  moving  to  the 
magic  of  music  and  the  pathos  of  their  undercurrent  of  sor- 
row."— Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 

11  Whittier  is  a  poet  militant,  a  crusader,  whose  moral 
weapons — since  he  must  disown  the  carnal — were  keen  of  edge 
and  seldom  in  their  scabbards.  .  .  .  At  an  age  when 
bardlings  are  making  sonnets  to  a  mistress's  eyebrow,  he  was 
facing  mobs  at  Plymouth,  Boston,  Philadelphia. 
The  poet's  deep-voiced  scorn  rendered  his  anti-slavery  verse 
a  very  different  thing  from  Longfellow's,  and  made  the  hearer 
sure  of  his  'effectual  calling.'  " — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  His  anti-slavery  poems  were  earnest  and  indignant;  ear- 
nest in  their  maintenance  of  the  freedom  of  all  men  without 
regard  to  color,  and  indignant  at  the  persecutions  of  those 
who  sought  to  restore  the  rights  which  had  been  wrested  from 
them.  .  .  .  Holding  the  opinions  that  he  did,  and  hav- 
ing the  temperament  that  he  had,  Mr.  Whittier  could  no  more 
have  stifled  his  fiery  denunciations  of  slavery  than  the  old 
Hebrew  seers  could  have  stifled  their  dark  and  fateful  prophe- 
cies."—^. H.  Stoddard. 

11  Some  of  his  most  indignant  and  sharpest  invective  was 
directed  against  Pope  Pius  IX.,  who  stood  to  Whittier  as  the 
very  type  of  that  Christian  obstructiveness  to  the  work  of 
Christ  which  in  a  lesser  degree  he  had  seen  in  his  own  coun- 
try, and  had  seen  always  only  to  express  the  heart-felt  scorn 
which  descended  to  him  with  his  Quaker  birthright."  — 
G.  E.  Woodberry. 


732  WHITTIER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  My  brain  took  fire  :  '  Is  this,'  I  cried, 
'  The  end  of  prayer  and  preaching  ? 
Then  down  with  pulpit,  down  with  priest, 
And  give  us  Nature's  teaching  !' 

"  Foul  shame  and  scorn  be  on  ye  all 
Who  turn  the  good  to  evil, 
And  steal  the  Bible  from  the  Lord, 
And  give  it  to  the  Devil  ! 

"  Than  garbled  text  or  parchment  law 
I  own  a  statute  higher  ; 
And  God  is  true,  though  every  book 
And  every  man  's  a  liar." — A  Sabbath  Scene. 

"  Is  the  old  Pilgrim  spirit  quenched  within  us, 

Stoops  the  strong  manhood  of  our  souls  so  low, 
That  Mammon's  lure  or  Party's  wile  can  win  us 
To  silence  now  ? 

"  What !  shall  we  henceforth  humbly  ask  as  favors 

Rights  all  our  own  ?     In  madness  shall  we  barter, 
For  treacherous  peace,  the  freedom  Nature  gave  us, 
God  and  our  charter  ?  " — A  Stimmer. 

"  And  what  are  ye  who  strive  with  God 

Against  the  ark  of  his  salvation, 
Moved  by  the  breast  of  prayer  abroad, 

With  blessings  for  a  dying  nation  ? 
What,  but  the  stubble  and  the  hay 

To  perish,  even  as  flax  consuming, 
With  all  that  bars  His  glorious  way, 
Before  the  brightness  of  His  coming  ?  " 

—  The  Pastoral  Letter. 

3.  Faith— Religious  Fervor— Piety.— "  It  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  man  that  his  first  poem  should  be  of  a  relig- 
ious nature.  .  .  .  The  impression  made  upon  the  mind 
is  one  of  harmony  and  solemn  stateliness,  not  unlike  that  of 


WHITTIER  733 

Thanatopsis,'  composed  by  Bryant  when  he  was  about  the 
same  age  as  was  Whittier  when  he  wrote  the  '  Deity.' 
Many  of  Whittier's  purely  religious  poems  are  among  the  most 
exquisite  and  beautiful  ever  written.  The  tender  feeling,  the 
warm-hearted  trustfulness,  and  the  reverent  touch  of  his 
hymns  speak  directly  to  our  hearts."  —  W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"  Whittier,  though  creedless,  is  one  of  the  most  religious 
of  our  poets.  ...  In  these  days  of  scepticism  as  to  the 
possibility  of  the  communication  of  the  Divine  Mind  with  the 
human,  it  is  consolation  to  read  his  poem  on  '  The  Eternal 
Goodness,'  especially  this  stanza  — 

'  I  know  not  where  His  islands  lift 

Their  fronded  palms  in  air  ; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  His  love  and  care.'  " 

—E.  P.   Whipple. 

"  In  the  popular  sense  of  the  word,  Whittier  has  no  theol- 
ogy. It  was  one  of  the  secrets  of  his  great  religious  influence 
that  he  sang  only  of  the  simple  essentials  of  faith. 
As  he  did  not  write  of  small  subjects,  so  he  did  not  take  small 
views  of  large  subjects.  He  was  as  free  from  the  cage  of  sec- 
tarianism as  a  Danvers  thrush  rising  from  the  tree-tops  of  Oak 
Knoll  on  a  May  morning.  He  soared  when  he  sang.  He 
poured  out  the  truths  that  men  must  live  by  and  that  they 
can  afford  to  die  by  or  die  for.  ...  I  have  sometimes 
thought  that  I  would  rather  give  a  man  on  the  verge  of  a 
great  moral  lapse  a  marked  copy  of  Whittier  than  any  other 
book  in  our  language.  In  a  word,  he  represents  the  broadest, 
because  he  represents  the  purest  elements  of  life." — Elizabeth 
Stuart  Phelps. 

"  Not  thine  to  lean  on  priesthood's  broken  reed  ; 

No  barriers  caged  thee  in  a  bigot's  fold. 
Did  zealots  ask  to  syllable  thy  creed, 

Thou  saidst  '  Our  Father,'  and  thy  creed  was  told." 
—Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


734  WHITTTER 

"  Whittier  is  the  most  religious  of  secular  poets,  .  .  . 
the  Galahad  of  modern  poets,  not  emasculate,  but  vigorous 
and  pure  ;  he  has  borne  the  Christian's  shield  of  faith  and 
sword  of  the  Spirit.  .  .  .  Whittier's  religious  mood  is 
far  from  being  superficial  and  temporary.  It  is  the  life  of  his 
genius,  out  of  which  flow  his  ideas  of  earthly  and  heavenly 
content.  ...  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  a  poem  for  sacred 
music,  or  for  such  an  occasion,  could  be  more  adequately 
wrought  [than  Whittier's  "Centennial  Hymn."]  .  .  . 
In  fine,  the  element  of  faith  gives  a  tone  to  the  whole  range 
of  his  verse  both  religious  and  secular." — E.  C.  Stedman. 
"  The  faith  that  lifts,  the  courage  that  sustains, 

These  thou  wert  sent  to  teach  : 
Hot  blood  of  battle  beating  in  thy  veins, 
Is  twinned  to  a  gentle  speech." 

— Bayard  Taylor. 

"  His  lyrics  and  idyls  of  the  plain  New  England  home,  and 
his  serene  hymns  of  religious  trust>  rise  from  the  pure  depths  of 
a  sincere  soul." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  Whittier,  alone,  is  religious  in  a  high  and  inward  sense. 
.  .  .  Some  imperfections  cling  to  all  souls;  but  few  have 
been  observed  in  our  time  so  well  poised,  so  pure,  and  so 
stainless  as  his.  .  .  .  The  '  Occasional  Poems '  are 
characterized  by  an  intense  religious  feeling,  which  melts  the 
heart  of  any  man  who  has  lived  among  primitive  Christians 
and  known  what  simple  and  natural  piety  is.  ...  The 
religious  element  in  Whittier's  poems  is  something  vital  and 
inseparable.  The  supremacy  of  moral  ideas  is  indeed  incul- 
cated by  almost  all  great  poets." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  Whatever  else  Whittier  was,  he  was  a  profoundly  religious 
man,  who  could  not  help  taking  life  in  earnest." — Barrett 
Wendell. 

"  His  expression  of  the  religious  feeling  is  always  noble  and 
impressive.  He  is  one  of  the  very  few  whose  poems,  written 
under  the  fervor  of  religious  emotion,  have  taken  a  higher 


WHITTIER  735 

range  and  become  true  hymns.  Several  of  these  are  already 
adopted  into  the  books  of  praise."  —  G.  E.  Woodberry. 

1  'Through  all  his  work  runs  the  deep  religious  sense  of  rest 
in  the  shadow  of  the  Everlasting  Wings,  despite  his  struggles, 
and  let  what  will  betide." — Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 

If  the  consensus  of  criticism  were  wanting  at  this  point,  the 
poet  has  given  us  the  following  picture  of  his  own  religious 
nature  in  the  beautiful  poem  entitled  "  My  Namesake  :  " 

"  He  worshipped  as  his  fathers  did, 

And  kept  the  faith  of  childish  days, 
And,  howsoe'er  he  strayed  or  slid, 
He  loved  the  good  old  ways. 

"  While  others  trod  the  altar  stairs 
He  faltered  like  the  publican  ; 
And,  while  they  praised  as  saints,  his  prayers 
Were  those  of  sinful  man. 

"  For,  awed  by  Sinai's  Mount  of  Law, 
The  trembling  faith  alone  sufficed, 
That,  through  its  cloud  and  flame,  he  saw 
The  sweet,  sad  face  of  Christ." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  see  the  wrong  that  round  me  lies, 

I  feel  the  guilt  within  ; 
I  hear,  with  groan  and  travail-cries, 
The  world  confess  its  sin. 

"  Yet,  in  the  maddening  maze  of  things, 

And  tossed  by  storm  and  flood, 
To  one  fixed  trust  my  spirit  clings  : 
I  know  that  God  is  good  ! 


I  long  for  household  voices  gone  ; 

For  vanished  smiles  I  long, 
But  God  hath  led  my  dear  ones  on, 

And  He  can  do  no  wrong. 

—  2 he  Eternal  Goodness. 


736  WHITTIER 

"  I  have  no  answer  for  myself  or  thee, 
Save  that  I  learned  beside  my  mother's  knee  ; 
*  All  is  of  God  that  is,  and  is  to  be  ; 
And  God  is  good.'     Let  this  suffice  us  still, 
Resting  in  childlike  trust  upon  his  will 
Who  moves  to  his  great  ends  unthwarted  by  the  ill." 

—  Trust. 

"  We  see  not,  know  not ;  all  our  way 
Is  night, — with  Thee  alone  is  day  ; 
From  out  the  torrent's  troubled  drift, 
Above  the  storm  our  prayers  we  lift  : 
Thy  will  be  done. 

"  We  take  with  solemn  thankfulness 
Our  burden  up,  nor  ask  it  less, 
And  count  it  joy  that  even  we 
May  suffer,  serve,  or  wait  for  Thee, 

Whose  will  be  done."—  Thy  Will  Be  Done. 


4.  Humanitarianism— Sympathy. — In  the  poem  en- 
titled "  My  Namesake  "  Whittier  justly  says  of  himself: 

"  He  loved  the  good  and  wise,  but  found 

His  human  heart  to  all  akin 
Who  met  him  on  the  common  ground 
Of  suffering  and  sin. 

"  Whate'er  his  neighbor  might  endure 
Of  pain  or  grief  his  own  became  ; 
For  all  the  ills  he  could  not  cure 
He  held  himself  to  blame." 

"  It  will  be  seen  that  Whittier  has  not  limited  his  sympa- 
thies to  oppressed  Africans  nor  even  to  his  own  persecuted 
people  ;  his  generous  spirit  takes  in  the  whole  of  suffering  hu- 
manity. The  wrongs  of  the  Indian  are  often  dwelt  upon  by 
him  ;  the  prisoner  for  debt  has  a  share  of  his  pity;  and  with 
all  his  energy  he  has  protested  against  capital  punishment  for 
crime.  .  .  .  [He  is]  a  chivalrous  philanthropist — pour- 


WHITT1ER  737 

ing  out  his  whole  heart  in  lyrics  for  the  poor  and  oppressed." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  It  has  been  said  until  it  says  itself  that  Whittier  was  the 
people's  poet.  This  is  true  ;  but  he  was  more  than  that.  He 
was  the  poet  of  a  broad  humanity.  .  .  .  He  spent  him- 
self on  the  great  needs  of  humanity,  and  the  great  heart  of 
humanity  answered  him.  He  went  to  that  as  straight  as  a  cry 
of  nature  ;  and  he  uplifted  it  as  truly  as  the  hand  of  Heaven. 
The  common  people  heard  him  gladly.  He  stands  apart  in 
their  choice  and  their  affection,  even  from  the  dearest  of 
their  great  plutarchy  of  American  poets  to  which  he  be- 
longed. .  .  .  The  people  loved  him  because  he  loved  the 
people.  It  was  his  honor  that  he  loved  them  nobly.  He  did 
not  sink  to  their  small  or  special  phases.  He  sings  to  the 
strength,  not  to  the  weakness  of  the  soul ;  he  does  not  con- 
ciliate passion  and  surrender  ;  he  suggests  prayer  and  power ; 
and  as  a  substitute  for  temptation  he  enforces  aspiration." 
— Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps. 

"  It  was  no  personal  ambition  that  made  Whittier  the  psalm- 
ist of  the  anti-slavery  movement.  .  .  .  The  suffering  of 
man  for  man,  the  cry  of  the  human,  never  fail  to  move  him. 
He  celebrates  all  brave  deeds  and  acts  of  renunciation.  The 
heroism  of  martyrs  and  resistants,  of  the  Huguenots,  the  Vau- 
dois,  the  Quakers,  the  English  reformers,  serves  him  for  many 
a  ballad.  .  .  .  His  most  vivid  pictures  are  of  scenes 
which  lie  near  his  heart  and  relate  to  common  life — to  the 
love  and  longing,  the  simple  joys  and  griefs  of  his  neighbors 
at  work  and  rest  and  worship." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Wherever  he  discovers  the  talisman  of  intellect  he  recog- 
nizes a  brother.  .  .  .  He  gives  to  humanity  the  songs  he 
might  have  given  to  the  eternal  art." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

11  There  is  room,  even  in  the  United  States,  for  such  a  func- 
tion as  that  of  poet  of  the  people  ;  and  here  Whittier  filled  a 
mission  apart  from  that  of  the  other  members  of  his  particular 
group  of  New  England  bards." — T.  W.  Higginson. 
47 


738  WHiTTIER 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Than  web  of  Persian  loom  most  rare, 

Or  soft  divan, 

Better  the  rough  rock,  bleak  and  bare, 
Or  hollow  tree  which  man  may  share 

With  suffering  man. 

"  I  hear  another  voice  :  '  The  poor 

Are  thine  to  feed  ; 
Turn  not  the  outcast  from  thy  door, 
Nor  give  to  bonds  and  wrong  once  more 
Whom  God  hath  freed."' 

— In  the  Evil  Days. 

"  Let  foplings  sneer,  let  fools  deride, — 

Ye  heed  no  idle  scorner  ; 
Free  hands  and  hearts  are  still  your  pride 
And  duty  done,  your  honor."     • 

—  The  Shoemakers. 

"  In  thy  lone  and  long  night-watches,  sky  above  and  sea  below, 
Thou  didst  learn  a  higher  wisdom  than  the  babbling  schoolmen 

know  ; 

God's  stars  and  silence  taught  thee,  as  his  angels  only  can, 
That  the  one  sole  sacred  thing  beneath  the  cope  of  heaven  is 

man." — The  Branded  Hand. 

"  For  gifts  in  His  name  of  food  and  rest 
The  tents  of  Islam  of  God  are  blest ; 
Thou  who  hast  faith  in  the  Christ  above, 
Shall  the  Koran  teach  thee  the  Law  of  Love  ? — 
O  Christian  ! — open  thy  heart  and  door, 
Cry  east  and  west  to  the  wandering  poor  : 
'Whoever  thou  art  whose  need  is  great, 
In  the  name  of  Christ  the  Compassionate 
And  Merciful  One,  for  thee  I  wait  ! '  " — Charity. 


WHITTIER  739 

5.  Consecration— Inspiration. — Like  Milton,  Whit- 
tier  seems  continually  to  be  impressed  with  the  thought  that 
he  has  been  divinely  called  and  set  apart  for  his  high  mission 
of  song.  Oliver  Johnson  has  called  him  "  the  Prophet  Bard 
of  America." 

''The  singer  would  seem  to  have  felt  himself  set  apart  for 
God's  great  purposes  ;  he  knew  the  burden  of  the  prophet, 
and  the  vision  of  Ezekiel  had  been  his  ;  and,  like  one  who  is 
an  instrument  in  the  use  of  Powers  above  and  beyond,  he 
sighs, 

'  Oh,  not  of  choice  for  themes  of  public  wrong 
I  leave  the  green  and  pleasant  paths  of  song.'  " 

— Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 

The  same  estimate  of  Whittier  has  prompted  Stedman  to 
address  to  him  a  volume  of  poems,  with  the  inscription  "Ad 
Vatem"  "  For  surely,"  adds  Stedman,  "  no  aged  servant, 
his  eyes  having  seen  in  good  time  the  Lord's  salvation,  ever 
was  more  endowed  with  the  love  and  reverence  of  a  chosen 
people."  Lowell,  too,  implies  the  same  estimate  when  he 
addresses  Whittier  as  follows  : 

"  All  honor  and  praise  to  the  right-hearted  bard, 
Who  was  true  to  the  Voice  when  such  service  was  hard." 

"  Poetry  seems  never  to  have  been  a  pursuit  to  him,  but  a 
charge  which  was  intrusted  to  him  and  which  he  had  to  de- 
liver when  the  spirit  moved  him,  well  or  ill,  as  it  happened ; 
but  honestly,  earnestly,  and  prayerfully." — jR.  H.  Stoddard. 

"They  ["  Voices  of  Freedom"]  were  uttered  at  the  call  of 
duty  and  encouraged  by  the  heavenly  influences.  The  bur- 
den was  upon  the  poet  as  upon  the  prophets  of  the  Jews. 
Whittier  never  faltered  in  his  mission.  .  .  .  His  work  in 
this  world  ...  has  been  inspired  always  by  God  and 
humanity.  .  .  .  He  was  a  psalmist  under  a  divine  call." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

"The  necessity  laid  on  him  as  a  poet  was  accepted   by 


74O  WHITTIER 

Whittier  with  the  glad  and  solemn  earnestness  of  a  prophet ; 
and  for  sixty  years  he  was  more  influential  as  a  teacher  of  re 
ligion  than  any  other  man  in  America." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"  In  his  outbursts  against  oppression  and  his  cries  unto 
the  Lord,  we  recognize  the  prophetic  fervor,  still  nearer  its 
height  in  some  of  his  personal  poems,  which  popular  instinct 
long  ago  attributed  to  him." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Whittier  was  not  only  the  trumpeter  of  the  Abolitionists, 
in  those  dark  but  splendid  days  of  fighting  positive  and  tangi- 
ble wrong  ;  he  was  the  very  trumpet  itself,  and  he  must  have 
felt  sometimes  that  the  breath  of  the  Lord  blew  through  him." 
—R.  W.  Gilder. 

"  Hermit  of  Amesbury,  thou  too  hast  heard, 
Voices  and  melodies  from  beyond  the  gates, 
And  speakest  only  when  thy  soul  is  stirred." 

— Longfellow. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  So  let  it  be.     In  God's  own  might 
We  gird  us  for  the  coming  fight, 
And,  strong  in  Him  whose  cause  is  ours, 
In  conflict  with  unholy  powers, 
We  grasp  the  weapons  He  has  given  : 
The  Light  and  Truth  and  Love  of  Heaven." 

—  The  Moral  Warfare. 

"  And  if,  in  our  un worthiness, 
Thy  sacrificial  wine  we  press  ; 
If  from  Thy  ordeal's  heated  bars 
Our  feet  are  seamed  with  crimson  scars, 
Thy  will  be  done  ! 

"  If,  for  the  age  to  come,  this  hour 
Of  trial  hath  vicarious  power, 
Ami,  blest  by  Thee,  our  present  pain 
Be  Liberty's  eternal  gain, 
Thy  will  be  done  ! 


WHITTIER  741 

"  Strike,  Thou  the  Master,  we  Thy  keys, 
The  anthem  of  the  destinies  ! 
The  minor  of  Thy  loftier  strain, 
Our  hearts  shall  breathe  the  old  refrain  : 
Thy  will  be  done  !  "—  Thy  Will  be  Done. 

"  We  wait  beneath  the  furnace-blast 

The  pangs  of  transformation  ; 
Not  painlessly  doth  God  recast 
And  mould  anew  the  nation. 
Hot  burns  the  fire 
Where  wrongs  expire  ; 
Nor  spares  the  hand 
That  from  the  land 
Uproots  the  ancient  evil. 

"  Then  let  the  selfish  lip  be  dumb, 

And  hushed  the  breath  of  sighing  ; 
Before  the  joy  of  peace  must  come 
The  pains  of  purifying. 
God  give  us  grace 
Each  in  his  place 
To  bear  his  lot, 
And,  murmuring  not, 
Endure  and  wait  and  labor  !  " 

— Luther's  Hymn. 

6.  Nationalism — Sectionalism. — When  Whittier  was 
but  thirty-nine  years  old,  Griswold  said  of  him  :  "He  may 
reasonably  be  styled  a  national  poet.  His  works  breathe 
affection  for  and  faith  in  our  republican  polity  and  unshackled 
religion."  The  later  productions  of  the  poet  have  caused 
both  American  and  foreign  critics  to  adopt  Griswold's  estimate. 
But  Whittier  is  national  because  he  is  sectional — because  the 
profoundest  moral  and  political  ideas  of  his  particular  section 
have  gradually  permeated  the  entire  Union.  Francis  Park- 
man  once  toasted  the  Quaker  poet  as  follows:  "  The  Poet  of 
New  England.  His  genius  drew  its  nourishment  from  her 


742  WHITTIER 

soil ;  his  pages  are  the  mirror  of  her  outward  nature  and  the 
strong  utterance  of  her  inward  life." 

"  From  the  day,  now  more  than  thirty  years  ago,  when  he 
wrote  : 

'  For  a  pale  hand  was  beckoning 

The  Huguenot  on, 
And  in  blackness  and  ashes 
Behind  was  St.  John/ 

to  his  last  idyl  of  New  England  life,  he  has  rarely  chosen  a 
foreign  theme,  however  seductive,  or  an  ancient  legend,  unless 
it  could  be  made  to  embody  some  aspiration  of  his  large  and 
loving  humanity." — Bayard  Taylor. 

"  Whittier  was  distinctively  a  local  poet,  a  New  Englander  ; 
but  to  acknowledge  this  does  not  diminish  his  honor,  nor  is 
he  thereby  set  in  a  secondary  place.  .  .  .  New  England 
had,  moreover,  this  advantage,  that  it  was  destined  to  set  the 
stamp  of  its  character  upon  the  larger  nation  in  which  it  was 
an  element ;  so  that  if  Whittier  be  regarded,  as  he  sometimes 
is,  as  a  representative  American  poet,  it  is  not  without  justice. 
He  is  really  national  so  far  as  the  spirit  of  New  England  has 
passed  into  the  nation  at  large.  .  .  .  There  can  be  little 
question  too,  that  he  is  a  representative  of  a  far  larger  portion 
of  the  American  people  than  any  other  of  the  elder  poets." 
— G.  E.  Woodberry. 

Stedman  indorses  Parkman  in  calling  Whittier  the  "  poet  of 
New  England;"  but  he  qualifies  this  estimate  of  Whittier's 
thought  and  genius  by  adding  that  "  this  hive  of  individuality 
[New  England]  has  sent  out  swarms,  and  scattered  its  ideas 
like  pollen  throughout  the  northern  belt  of  our  States.  As  far 
as  these  have  taken  hold,  modified  by  change  and  experience, 
New  England  stands  for  the  nation  and  her  singer  for  the  na- 
tional poet.  .  .  .  All  in  all,  and  more  than  others,  he 
has  read  the  heart  of  New  England,  and  expressed  the  con- 
victions of  New  England  at  her  height  of  moral  supremacy. 
.  .  .  But  he  was  the  singer  of  what  was  not  an  empty 


WHITTIER  743 

day,  and  of  a  section  whose  movement  became  that  of  a  na- 
tion, and  whose  purpose  in  the  end  was  grandly  consum- 
mated." 

" '  Snow-Bound  '  is  our  one  national  idyl,  the  perfect  poem 
of  New  England  winter  life." — ft.  W.  Gilder. 

"He  is  in  the  highest  degree  patriotic,  American.  He 
loves  America  because  it  is  the  land  of  freedom.  ...  If 
anybody  will  take  the  trouble  to  glance  over  the  complete 
works  of  Whittier,  he  or  she  will  find  that  one  of  the  pre- 
dominant characteristics  of  his  writings  is  their  indigenous 
quality,  their  national  spirit.  Indeed,  this  is  almost  too  no- 
torious to  need  mention.  He,  if  any  one,  merits  the  proud 
title  of  '  A  Representative  American  Poet.'  His  whole  soul 
is  on  fire  with  love  of  country.  As  is  the  case  of  Whitman, 
his  country  is  his  bride,  and  upon  it  he  has  showered 
all  the  affectionate  wealth  of  his  nature.  .  .  .  He  has  a 
.distinctive  national  spirit  or  vision  ;  he  is  democratic  in  his 
feelings,  and  treats  of  indigenous  subjects." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"  The  home-bred  singer,  like  so  many  of  his  predecessors, 
framed  the  simple  chant  of  that  which  he  best  knew.  .  .  . 
The  young  editor  in  various  Eastern  cities  never  lost  his  con- 
stant and  affectionate  memories  of  the  lovely  Essex  county 
which  gave  him  birth  ;  and  he  carried  into  his  political  work 
the  placid  strength  of  the  Merrimack  in  its  familiar  meadows 
near  the  sea.  His  genius  is  wholly  instinctive  and  national." 
— C.  P.  Richardson. 

"  His  themes  have  been  mainly  chosen  from  his  own  times 
and  country,  from  his  own  neighborhood,  even. 
Whittier  has  done  as  much  for  the  scenery  of  New  England  as 
Scott  for  that  of  Scotland.  .  .  .  One  quality  above  all 
others  in  Whittier — his  innate  and  unstudied  Americanism — . 
has  rendered  him  alike  acceptable  to  his  countrymen  and  to 
his  kindred  beyond  the  sea." — James  Grant  Wilson. 

"John  Greenleaf  Whittier  is,  in  some  respects,  the  most 
American  of  all  the  American  poets.  .  .  .  It  is  safe  to 


744  WHITTIER 

say  that  he  has  been  less  influenced  by  other  literature  than 
any  of  our  poets — with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  Bryant." 
— £.  H.  Stoddard. 

"  To  our  own  mind,  Mr.  Whittier  is  perhaps  the  most 
peculiarly  American  poet  of  any  that  our  country  has  pro- 
duced. The  woods  and  waterfowl  of  Bryant  belong  as  much 
to  one  land  as  to  another  ;  and  all  the  rest  of  our  singers : 
Emerson,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  and  their  brethren — with  the 
single  exception  of  Joaquin  Miller — might  as  well  have  been 
born  in  the  land  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  and  Byron  as  in 
their  own.  But  Whittier  is  entirely  the  poet  of  his  own  soil. 
All  through  his  verse  we  see  the  elements  that  created  it." 
— Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

11  Our  father's  God!  From  out  whose  hand 
The  centuries  fall  like  grains  of  sand, 
We  meet  to-day,  united,  free, 
And  loyal  to  our  land  and  Thee  ; 
To  thank  Thee  for  the  era  done 
And  trust  Thee  for  the  opening  one. 

"  Thou,  who  hast  here  in  concord  furled 
The  war-flags  of  a  gathered  world, 
Beneath  our  Western  skies  fulfil 
The  Orient's  mission  of  good  will  ; 
And,  freighted  with  love's  Golden  Fleece, 
Send  back  its  Argonauts  of  peace." 

— Centennial  Hymn. 

"  The  riches  of  the  Commonwealth 

Are  free,  strong  minds,  and  hearts  of  health  ; 
And  more  to  her  than  gold  or  grain, 
The  cunning  hand  and  cultured  brain. 

"  For  well  she  keeps  her  ancient  stock, 
The  stubborn  strength  of  Pilgrim  Rock. 
And  still  maintains,  with  milder  laws 
And  clearer  light,  the  Good  Old  Cause  !" — Our  State. 


WHITTIER  745 

"  We  give  thy  natal  day  to  hope, 

O  Country  of  our  love  and  prayer  ! 
Thy  way  is  down  no  fatal  slope, 
But  up  to  freer  sun  and  air. 

"  Tried  as  by  furnace-fires,  and  yet 

By  God's  grace  only  stronger  made  ; 
In  future  task  before  thee  set 

Thou  shalt  not  lack  the  old-time  aid. 

"  The  fathers  sleep,  but  men  remain 

As  wise,  as  true,  as  brave  as  they  ; 
Why  count  the  loss  and  not  the  gain  ? — 
The  best  is  that  we  have  to-day."—  Our  Country. 


7.  Genius  for  Ballad-Making — Lyrical  Power. — 

"  We  have  no  American  ballad-writer — that  is,  writer  of  bal- 
lads founded  on  our  native  history  and  tradition — who  can  be 
compared  with  him,  either  in  the  range  or  skilful  treatment 
of  his  material." — Bayard  Taylor. 

"  These  fresh  improvisations  [ballads]  are  as  perfect  works 
of  art  as  the  finest  Greek  marbles.  .  .  .  Such  ballads  as 
« The  Witch's  Daughter '  and  '  Telling  of  the  Bees '  are  as 
absolutely  faultless  productions  as  Wordsworth's  '  We  are 
Seven  '  and  his  *  Lucy  Gray,'  or  as  Uhland's  '  Des  S anger' s 
.Pluck,"1  or  William  Blake's  '  Mary.'  .  .  .  The  period  in 
Whittier's  life  from  about  1858  to  1868  we  may  call  the  Bal- 
lad Decade;  for  within  this  time  were  produced  most  of  his 
immortal  ballads.  We  say  immortal,  believing  that  if  all 
else  that  he  has  written  shall  perish,  his  finest  ballads  will 
carry  his  name  down  to  remote  posterity.  .  .  .  'The 
Tent  on  the  Beach  '  is  mainly  a  series  of  ballads  ;  and  '  Snow- 
Bound,'  although  not  a  ballad,  is  still  a  narrative  poem  closely 
allied  to  this  species  of  poetry,  the  difference  between  a  ballad 
and  an  idyl  being  that  one  is  made  to  be  sung  and  the  other 
to  be  read  ;  both  narrate  events  as  they  occur,  and  leave  to 
the  reader  all  sentiments  of  reflection."  —  W.  S.  Kennedy. 


746  WHTTTIER 

"  His  poem  itself  ["  Cassandra  South  wick  "]  can  scarcely 
be  overrated.  The  march  of  the  verse  has  something  that  re- 
minds us  of  the  rhythm  of  Macaulay's  fine  classical  ballads, 
something  which  is  resemblance,,  not  imitation." — Mary 
Russell  Mitford. 

"Almost  alone  among  American  poets  he  has  revived  the 
legends  of  his  neighborhood  in  verse,  and  his  *  Floyd  Ireson  ' 
is  among  the  best  of  modern  ballads,  surpassed  by  none  save 
Scott,  if  even  by  him." — -James  Grant  Wilson. 

"  In  reality,  he  has  managed  the  ballad  form  with  more 
skill  than  other  measures." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  There  can  be  no  question  as  to  Whittier's  genius  for 
ballad-making."—^.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Lyrics  such  as  'Telling  the  Bees,'  'Maud  Muller,'  and 
'  My  Playmate '  are  miniature  classics  ;  of  this  kind  are  those 
which   confirmed  his  reputation  and  still  make  his  volumes 
real  household  books  of  song." — E.  C.  Stedman. 
"  There  was  ne'er  a  man  born  who  had  more  of  the  swing 
Of  the  true  lyric  bard  and  all  that  kind  of  thing." 

— Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Then  rose  up  John  de  Matha 

In  the  strength  the  Lord  Christ  gave, 
And  begged  through  all  the  land  of  France 
The  ransom  of  the  slave. 


"  '  God  save  us  ! '  cried  the  captain, 
'  For  nought  can  us  avail ; 
Oh,  woe  betide  the  ship  that  lacks 
Her  rudder  and  her  sail  ! 

"  '  Behind  us  are  the  Moormen  ; 
At  sea  we  sink  or  strand  ; 
There's  death  upon  the  water, 
There's  death  upon  the  land  I ' 


WHITTIER  747 

"  Then  up  spake  John  de  Matha  : 
God's  errands  never  fail  ! 
Take  thou  the  mantle  which  I  wear, 
And  make  of  it  a  sail.' 

"  They  raised  the  cross-wrought  mantle, 
The  blue,  the  white,  the  red ; 
And  straight  before  the  wind  off-shore 
The  ship  of  Freedom  spread." 

—  The  Mantle  of  St.  John  De  Matha. 

"  They  bound  him  on  the  fearful  rack, 

When,  through  the  dungeon's  vaulted  dark, 
He  saw  the  light  of  shining  robes, 
And  knew  the  face  of  good  St.  Mark. 

"  Then  sank  the  iron  rack  apart, 
The  cords  released  their  cruel  clasp, 
The  pincers,  with  the  teeth  of  fire, 
Fell  broken  from  the  torturer's  grasp." 

—  The  Legend  of  St.  Mark. 

i(  A  weight  seemed  lifted  from  my  heart, — a  pitying  friend  was 
nigh, 

I  felt  it  in  his  hard,  rough  hand,  and  saw  it  in  his  eye  ; 

And  when  again  the  sheriff  spoke,  that  voice,  so  kind  to  me, 
Growled  back  its  stormy  answer  like  the  roaring  of  the  sea, — 

II  '  Pile  my  ship  with  bars  of  silver, — pack  with  coins  of  Spanish 

gold, 

From  keel-piece  up  to  deck-plank,  the  roomage  of  her  hold, 
By  the  living  God  who  made  me  ! — I  would  sooner  in  your  bay 
Sink  ship  and  crew  and  cargo,  than  bear  this  child  awny  ! ' ' 

— Cassandra  Southwick. 

8.  Power  of  Characterization. — "  The  two  poems 
upon  Sumner  are  eminent  specimens  of  careful  study  and 
strong  portraiture.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Dr.  Howe,  of 
Mrs.  Keene,  of  Webster  in  'The  Lost  Occasion '—of  Field 
and  Taylor — and  still  more  of  the  touching  and  matchless 
eulogy  of  Burns.  The  concluding  stanzas  of  the  last-men- 
tioned poem  are  so  full  of  tenderness,  shadowed  by  inevitable 


748  WHITTIER 

regret,  so  fervent  in  the  appreciation  of  genius,  and  so  throb- 
bing with  manly  love,  that  it  is  hard  for  a  man  of  sensibility 
to  read  them  without  tears.  .  .  .  The  language  of  his 
genius  was  manifested  in  '  Randolph  of  Roanoke,'  a  magnifi- 
cent tribute  to  the  memory  of  that  great  man,  and  all  the 
more  so  in  that  it  was  wrung  from  the  lips  of  an  opponent. 
As  a  piece  of  character-painting  I  know  not  where  to  look 
for  its  equal.  .  .  .  He  is  a  remarkable  critic  of  character, 
as  he  proved  in  his  '  Ichabod,'  in  '  Sumner,'  and  in  the 
poem  entitled  '  My  Namesake,'  a  keen,  searching  examination 
of  his  mental  qualities  and  of  the  intention  and  scope  of  his 
poetry." — F,  H.  Underwoo'd. 

11  In  his  tribute  to  the  eminent  men  and  women  of  his 
day,  ...  we  observe  a  fine  discrimination  of  character 
and  the  power  of  placing  mental  and  moral  traits  in  high 
relief.  .  .  .  As  a  piece  of  character-painting  [Randolph 
of  Roanoke]  I  know  not  where  to  look  for  its  equal,  and 
the  marvel  is  that  the  portrait  of  this  great  slave-hplder  should 
have  been  drawn  so  justly  by  such  a  partisan  as  Whittier. 
'  The  Barefoot  Boy '  is  an  exquisite  character- 
study,  which,  as  far  as  my  recollection  goes,  has  no  parallel 
in  English  poetry." — It.  H.  Stoddard. 

"  As  a  writer  of  personal  tributes,  whether  paeans  or  mono- 
dies, the  reform  bard,  with  his  peculiar  faculty  of  characteri- 
zation, has  been  happily  gifted.  .  .  .  The  conception  of 
*  Ichabod  '  is  most  impressive.  Those  darkening  lines  were 
graven  too  deep  for  obliteration." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Reference  should  be  made  to  the  numerous  personal 
tributes — often  full  of  grace,  of  tender  feeling,  and  of  true 
honor  paid  to  the  humble — which  he  was  accustomed  to  lay  as 
his  votive  wreath  on  the  graves  of  his  companions. 
The  verses  to  Garrison  and  Sumner,  naturally  stand  first  in 
fervor  and  range  as  well  as  in  interest." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  Their  [his  characters']  likeness  canvas  never  will  so  well 
repeat." — Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  One  language  held  his  heart  and  lip, 

Straight  onward  to  his  goal  he  trod, 
And  proved  the  highest  statesmanship 
Obedience  to  the  voice  of  God. 

"  No  wail  was  in  his  voice  ;  none  heard, 

When  treason's  storm-cloud  blackest  grew, 
The  weakness  of  a  doubtful  word  ; 
His  duty,  and  the  end,  he  knew. 

"  For  there  was  nothing  base  or  small 
Or  craven  in  his  soul's  broad  plan  ; 
Forgiving  all  things  personal, 
He  hated  only  wrong  to  man." 

—  On  Charles  Sumner. 

"  Not  for  rapt  hymn  nor  woodland  lay, 

Too  grave  for  smiles,  too  sweet  for  tears  ; 
We  speak  his  praise  who  wears  to-day 
The  glory  of  his  seventy  years. 

11  When  Peace  brings  Freedom  in  her  train, 

Let  happy  lips  his  songs  rehearse  ; 
His  life  is  now  his  noblest  strain, 
His  manhood  better  than  his  verse." 

— Bryant  on  his  Birthday. 

11  His  still  the  keen  analysis 

Of  men  and  moods,  electric  wit, 
Free  play  of  mirth,  and  tenderness 
To  heal  the  slightest  wound  from  it. 

"  And  his  the  pathos  touching  all 

Life's  sins  and  sorrows  and  regrets, 
Its  hopes,  its  fears,  its  final  call 
And  rest  beneath  the  violets. 

"His  sparkling  surface  scarce  betrays 

The  thoughtful  tide  beneath  it  rolled, 
The  wisdom  of  the  latter  days, 

And  tender  memories  of  the  old." — Our  Autocrat. 


7  SO  WHITTIER 

9.  Dexterous  Use  of  Proper  Names.— Whittier's 
fluency  has  been  the  theme  of  general  remark.  It  is  perhaps 
nowhere  better  illustrated  than  in  the  remarkable  way  in 
which  he  blends  formidable  proper  names  into  smooth 
verse. 

"The  Indian  names  are  made  as  musical  as  Homer's 
enumeration  of  the  Greek  ships." — Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 

"That  he  had  a  certain  amount  of  natural  ear  is  shown  by 
his  use  of  proper  names,  in  which,  after  his  early  period  of 
Indian  experiments  had  passed,  he  rarely  erred." — T.  W. 
Higginson. 

"  The  musical  nomenclature  of  the  red  aborigines  is  finely 
handled,  and  such  words  as  Pennacook,  Babboosuck,  Coutoo- 
cook,  Bashaba,  and  Weetamoc  chime  out  here  and  there 
along  the  pages  with  as  silvery  a  sweetness  as  the  Tuscan  words 
in  Macaulay's  'Lays.'  '  —W.S.  Kennedy. 

"  Through  thee  her  Merrimacs  and  Agrochooks 
And  many  a  name  uncouth  even  gracious  looks." 

— Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Squirrels  which  fed  where  nuts  fell  thick 
In  the  gravelly  bed  of  the  Otternic  ; 
And  small  wild  hens,  in  reed-snares  caught, 
From  the  banks  of  Sondargadee  brought  ; 

"  Pike  and  perch  from  the  Suncook  taken, 
Nuts  from  the  trees  of  the  Black  Hills  shaken, 
Cranberries  picked  from  the  Squamscot  bog, 
And  grapes  from  the  vines  of  the  Piscataquog." 

—  The  Bridal  of  Pennacook. 

"  Lead  us  away  in  shadow  and  sunshine, 
Slaves  of  fancy,  through  all  thy  miles, 
The  winding  ways  of  Pemigewasset, 
And  Winnipesaukee's  hundred  isles." 

— Revisited. 


WHITTIER  751 

"  Still  let  them  come,— from  Quito's  walls 
And  from  the  Orinoco's  tide, 
From  Lima's  Inca-haunted  halls, 
From  Santa  Fe  and  Yucatan, — 
Men  who  by  swart  Guerrero's  side 
Proclaimed  the  deathless  rights  of  man, 
Broke  every  bond  and  fetter  off, 
And  hailed  in  every  sable  serf 
A  free  and  brother  Mexican  !  " 
—  The  World's  Convention  of  Friends  of  Emancipation. 

10.  Biblical  Imagery. — The  most  superficial  observer 
cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  with  Whittier's  remarkable 
acquaintance  with  Holy  Writ.  It  colors  all  his  pages,  and 
supplies  him  with  a  large  proportion  of  his  imagery. 

11  The  injunction  to  beware  of  the  man  of  one  book  applies 
to  the  poet  whose  Bible  was  interpreted  for  him  by  a  Quaker 
mother.  Its  letter  is  rarely  absent  from  his  verse,  and  its  spirit 
never.  His  hymns,  than  which  he  composes  nothing  more 
spontaneously,  are  so  many  acts  of  faith." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Whittier  has  drawn  great  refreshment  and  inspiration 
from  the  thrice-winnowed  wheat  and  the  living  wells  of  Old- 
Testament  literature." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"  His  strong  imagination  fed  upon  it  [the  Bible].  And 
as  its  very  phraseology  is  blended  with  his  familiar  and  his 
poetic  speech,  so,  more  than  this,  his  whole  nature  drew  upon 
the  fountains  of  its  waters.  It  is  interesting  to  observe  how, 
throughout  his  poetry,  allusions  to  Biblical  characters  and 
passages  fall  as  naturally  from  his  lips  as  Greek  or  Roman 
allusions  from  Milton's." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Give  and  receive ;  go  forth  and  bless 

The  world  that  needs  the  hand  and  heart 
Of  Martha's  helpful  carefulness 
No  less  than  Mary's  better  part." 

— At  School-close. 


752  WHITTIER 

c<  Another  sound  my  spirit  hears, 

A  deeper  sound,  that  drowns  them  all, — 
A  voice  of  pleading  choked  with  tears, 
The  call  of  human  hopes  and  fears, 
The  Macedonian  cry  to  Paul ! " 

—  The  Summons. 

"  And  Samson's  riddle  is  our  own  to-day, 

Of  sweetness  from  the  strong, 
Of  union,  peace,  and  freedom  plucked  away 
From  the  rent  jaws  of  wrong." 

—  J^he  Hive  at  Gettysburg. 

ii.  Simplicity  —  Sincerity  —  Artlessness.  —  "His 
artless  art,  as  it  has  been  well  called,  was  but  developed  in 
his  later  years.  .  .  .  What  he  said  was  best  said  in  the 
simple,  natural  way  in  which  he  chose  to  say  it." — Elizabeth 
Stuart  Phelps. 

•''As  Longfellow's  finely  modulated  instrument  will  carry 
some  of  his  light  conceptions  farther  down  the  years  than 
they  would  be  likely  to  win  through  their  own  force ;  so  we 
may  reasonably  have  confidence  that  the  entire  naturalness  of 
Whittier's  art,  despite  its  narrow  technical  range — he  never 
wrote  a  sonnet,  for  example — will  continue  long  to  please 
the  lovers  of  poetry. " — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"The  wasteful  irregularity  and  hurried  excess  which  have 
diminished  or  destroyed  the  value  of  so  much  of  Whittier's 
writings — and  so  much  of  American  literature — here  [in 
"  Snow-Bound  "]  gives  place  to  the  simplicity  of  artless  art, 
lightly  touched  and  slightly  transfigured  by  gleams  of  that 
ideal  excellence  toward  which  life  and  its  reflecting  litera- 
ture aspire." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  One  and  all  of  them  [the  narrative  poems]  we  may  cer- 
tainly call  simple,  earnest,  artless,  and  beautifully  true  to  the 
native  traditions  and  temper  of  New  England." — Barrett 
Wendell. 

"  He  is  always  simple,  always  free  from  that    turgidness 


WHITTIER  753 

and  mixture  of  metaphors  which  often  mar  the  writings  of 
Lowell." — T.   W.  Higginson. 

"At  every  step  of  the  analysis  it  is  not  with  art  but  with 
matter,  not  with  the  literature  of  taste  but  with  that  of  life, 
not  with  a  poet's  skill  but  with  a  man's  soul,  that  we  find 
ourselves  dealing;  in  a  word,  it  is  with  character  almost 
solely ;  and  it  is  this  which  has  made  him  the  poet  of  his 
people,  as  the  highest  art  might  have  failed  to  do,  because  he 
has  put  his  New  England  birth  and  breeding — the  common 
inheritance  of  her  freedom-loving,  human,  and  religious 
people  which  he  shared — into  plain  living,  yet  on  such  a  level 
of  distinction  that  his  virtues  have  honored  the  land." — G. 
E.  Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  We  saw  the  slow  tides  go  and  come, 

The  curving  surf-lines  lightly  drawn, 
The  gray  rocks  touched  with  tender  bloom 
Beneath  the  fresh-blown  rose  of  dawn. 

"  We  saw  in  richer  sunsets  lost 

The  sombre  pomp  of  showery  noons  ; 
And  signalled  spectral  sails  that  crossed 
The  weird,  low  light  of  rising  moons. 

"  On  stormy  eves  from  cliff  and  head 

We  saw  the  white  spray  tossed  and  spurned ; 
While  over  all,  in  gold  and  red, 

Its  face  of  fire  the  lighthouse  turned." 

— A  Sea  Dream. 

"  The  pines  were  dark  on  Ramoth  hill, 
Their  song  was  soft  and  low ; 
The  blossoms  in  the  sweet  May  wind 
Were  falling  like  the  snow. 

"  The  blossoms  drifted  at  our  feet, 
The  orchard  birds  sang  clear ; 
The  sweetest  and  the  saddest  day 
It  seemed  of  all  the  year. 


754  WHITT1ER 

"  For,  more  to  me  than  birds  and  flowers, 
My  playmate,  left  her  home, 
And  took  with  her  the  laughing  spring, 
The  music  and  the  bloom. 

"  She  kissed  the  lips  of  kith  and  kin, 
She  laid  her  hand  in  mine  : 
What  more  could  ask  the  bashful  boy 
Who  fed  her  father's  kine  ? 

"  She  left  us  in  the  bloom  of  May  ; 
The  constant  years  told  o'er 
Their  seasons  with  as  sweet  May  morns, 
But  she  came  back  no  more. 

"  I  walked,  with  noiseless  feet,  the  round 
Of  uneventful  years  ; 
Still  o'er  and  o'er  I  sow  the  spring 
And  reap  the  autumn  ears." — My  Playmate. 

"  No  bird-song  floated  down  the  hill, 
The  tangled  bank  below  was  still ; 

"  No  rustle  from  the  birchen  stem, 
No  ripple  from  the  water's  hem. 

"  The  dusk  of  twilight  round  us  grew, 
We  felt  the  falling  of  the  dew ; 

"  For,  from  us,  ere  the  day  was  done, 
The  wooded  hills  shut  out  the  sun. 

"  But  on  the  river's  farther  side 
We  saw  the  hill-tops  glorified, — 

"  A  tender  glow,  exceeding  fair, 
A  dream  of  day  without  its  glare. 

**  With  us  the  damp,  the  chill,  the  gloom ; 
With  them  the  sunset's  rosy  bloom  ; 

"  While  dark,  through  willowy  vistas  seen, 
The  river  rolled  in  shade  between." 

—  The  River  Path. 


TENNYSON,  1809-1892 

Biographical  Outline. — Alfred  Tennyson,  born  at  Som- 
ersby,  North  Lincolnshire,  August  6,  1809  ;  father  rector  of 
Somersby  ;  Tennyson  is  the  fourth  of  twelve  children,  and 
two  of  his  seven  brothers  also  become  poets  of  some  distinc- 
tion ;  his  father  was  the  son  of  an  English  gentleman,  who 
had  disinherited  him  in  favor  of  a  younger  brother  ;  Tenny- 
son is  taught  at  home  till  his  seventh  year,  when  he  is  sent  to 
Lowth  to  live  with  his  grandmother  and  to  attend  the  gram- 
mar school  of  that  town  ;  he  passes  four  years  unpleasantly  at 
this  school,  under  a  strict  and  passionate  master;  in  1820  he 
returns  to  Somersby,  and  remains  there  under  his  father's  tui- 
tion till  he  enters  college  ;  he  becomes  an  omnivorous  reader, 
especially  of  poetry,  in  his  father's  good  library,  and  is  in- 
spired by  the  charm  of  his  rural  surroundings  at  Somersby, 
which  were  celebrated  later  in  his  "Ode  to  Memory;  "  in 
his  thirteenth  year,  in  a  letter  to  his  mother,  he  writes  a  crit- 
ical review  of  Milton's  "Samson  Agonistes,"  illustrating  his 
points  by  references  to  Homer,  Dante,  and  other  poets  ;  he 
began  to  write  verse  at  the  age  of  eight,  first  praising  the 
flowers  in  Thomsonian  blank  verse  and  then,  having  fallen 
under  the  spell  of  Pope's  "  Homer,"  writing  "  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  lines  in  the  regular  Popeian  metre  ;  "  before  his 
thirteenth  year  he  wrote  an  "  epic  "  of  six  thousand  lines,  and 
his  father  predicted,  "  if  Alfred  should  die,  one  of  our  great- 
est poets  will  have  gone;"  in  1827  Tennyson  collaborates 
with  his  brother  Charles  in  publishing,  through  a  bookseller 
of  Lowth,  a  volume  entitled  "  Poems  by  Two  Brothers,"  for 
which  they  receive  ^20,  one-half  being  taken  in  books  ;  Ten- 
nyson's part  in  this  volume  consists  mainly  of  imitations  of 

755 


756  TENNYSON 

Byron,  Moore,  and  other  favorites,  and  is  inferior  to  his 
earlier  poems,  which  he  rejected  from  the  published  volume  as 
being  "  too  much  out  of  the  common  for  the  public  taste;" 
these  rejected  poems,  of  which  specimens  were  afterward  col- 
lected by  his  son,  show  an  astonishing  command  of  metre  and 
music. 

In  February,  1828,  with  his  brother  Charles,  Tennyson 
matriculates  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  soon 
becomes  intimate  with  such  stimulating  companions  as  J.  R. 
Spedding,  Monckton  Milnes(Lord  Houghton),  J.  M.  Kemble, 
Merivale,  R.  C.  Trench,  Charles  Buller,  and  Arthur  Hallam, 
the  youngest  son  of  the  historian  and  the  dearest  friend  of 
Tennyson  ;  in  "  In  Memoriam,"  of  which  Hallam  is  the  sub- 
ject, the  poet  calls  him  "  as  near  perfect  as  mortal  man  can 
be  ;  "  Tennyson  does  excellent  work  as  a  student  at  Cam- 
bridge, devoting  himself  especially  to  the  classics  as  well  as  to 
history  and  the  natural  sciences ;  he  also  takes  a  keen  interest 
in  the  political  questions  of  the  day,  and  works  constantly  at 
metrical  composition  ;  in  June,  1829,  at  the  instigation  of 
his  father,  he  competes  for  and  wins  the  chancellor's  medal, 
with  verses  entitled  "  Timbuctoo  ;  "  this  was  really  an  old 
poem  of  Tennyson's,  written  in  blank  verse  on  "  The  Battle 
of  Armageddon  ' '  and  adapted  to  the  new  theme  ;  Alfred 
Ainger  calls  it  "  as  Tennysonian  as  anything  the  author  ever 
produced;"  Tennyson's  competitors  in  this  contest  were 
Milnes  and  Hallam  ;  in  1830  he  publishes  a  volume  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  pages,  entitled  "  Poems,  Chiefly  Lyrical,"  and 
containing,  besides  other  poems  afterward  discarded,  "  Clari- 
bel,"  "  An  Ode  to  Memory,"  "Mariana  in  the  Moated 
Grange,"  "The  Dying  Swan,"  etc.;  although  not  at  first 
appreciated  by  the  public,  Tennyson's  work  in  this  volume  is 
praised  by  Leigh  Hunt  and  by  John  Bowring,  who  commends 
it  in  the  Westminster  Review ;  in  the  summer  of  1830,  with 
his  friend  Hallam,  Tennyson  makes  an  expedition  to  the 
Pyrenees,  where  he  receives  much  poetic  stimulation  from  the 


TENNYSON  757 

beautiful  scenery  and  where  he  writes  parts  of  "  CEnone  "  in 
the  valley  of  Carterets  in  February,  1831. 

After  two  and  one-half  years  at  Cambridge  he  is  compelled 
by  the  ill  health  of  his  father  to  leave  the  university  ;  in  1830 
he  expresses  disapproval  of  the  educational  methods  prevailing 
at  Cambridge,  in  a  sonnet,  complaining  that  "  they  taught 
him  nothing,  feeding  not  the  heart;  "  his  father  dies  within 
a  month  after  Tennyson  leaves  Cambridge,  and  Arthur  Hal- 
lam  becomes  a  very  frequent  and  intimate  visitor  of  the  poet 
and  his  mother  at  the  Somersby  rectory  ;  in  1831  Hallam  be- 
comes engaged  to  Tennyson's  sister  Mary ;  their  ideal  court- 
ship is  immortalized  later  by  the  poet  in  "  In  Memoriam  ;  " 
as  the  new  rector  of  Somersby  did  not  care  to  occupy  the 
manse,  the  Tennysons  remained  there  till  1837  ;  during  these 
years  Tennyson  frequently  visits  Hallam's  family  in  Wimpole 
Street,  London,  and  there  ardently  discusses  literary  and  so- 
cial questions,  while  his  manuscript  poems  are  handed  about 
freely  among  his  intimate  friends  for  criticism  before  publica- 
tion ;  in  the  summer  of  1832  Tennyson  and  Hallam  make  a 
tour  of  the  Rhine  district,  and  in  December  of  that  year  the 
poet  publishes  "  Poems  by  Alfred  Tennyson,"  a  volume  in- 
cluding "  The  Lady  of  Shalott,"  "The  Miller's  Daughter," 
"  The  Palace  of  Art,"  "  The  Lotos  Eaters,"  and  "  A  Dream 
of  Fair  Women  ;  ' '  three  hundred  volumes  of  the  new  poems 
are  promptly  sold,  but  they  are  condemned  in  a  silly  and  bru- 
tal criticism  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  with  the  result  that 
Tennyson  publishes  no  more  verse  for  ten  years. 

On  September  15,  1833,  Arthur  Hallam  dies  suddenly  at 
Vienna,  while  travelling  with  his  father  ;  his  body  is  brought 
to  England,  and  is  interred  at  Clevedon,  Somerset,  in  a  church 
overlooking  the  Bristol  Channel ;  Tennyson  and  his  family  are 
overwhelmed  by  the  loss,  and  he  writes  at  this  time  fragments 
of  "  In  Memoriam,"  though  this  poem  was  not  completed 
and  published  till  ten  years  afterward  ;  about  this  time  he 
writes  also  "  Two  Voices,"  and  "Thoughts  on  Suicide;" 


758  TENNYSON 

he  afterward  declared  that  the  loss  of  Hallam  blotted  out  all 
joy  from  his  life  and  made  him  long  for  death;  during  the 
next  few  years  he  remains  at  Somersby,  "  reading  widely  all 
literatures,  polishing  old  poems,  making  new  ones,  correspond- 
ing with  Spedding,  Kemble,  Milnes,  and  others,  and  acting 
as  father  and  adviser  to  the  family  at  home;  "  at  the  mar- 
riage of  his  brother  Charles,  in  1836,  Tennyson  takes  into  the 
church  as  a  bridesmaid  the  elder  sister  of  his  brother's  bride, 
Miss  Emily,  daughter  of  Henry  Sellwood,  a  solicitor  at  Horn- 
castle,  and  eventually  they  become  engaged  ;  with  his  mother 
and  the  rest  of  the  family  he  removes,  in  1837,  from  Somersby 
to  High  Beech  in  Epping  Forest,  where  they  remain  till 
1840  ;  they  go  thence  to  Tun  bridge  Wells  for  a  year  and,  in 
1841,  settle  at  Boxley  near  Maidstone ;  meantime  Tennyson 
continues  to  write  poetry  and  completes,  as  early  as  1835,  the 
"  Moited'  Arthur,"  "The  Day  Dream,"  and  "The  Gar- 
dener's Daughter  ;  "  in  1837  he  contributes  to  "  a  volume  of 
the  <  keepsake'  order"  his  poem  "The  Tribute;"  during 
this  year  he  also  meets  Gladstone,  who  becomes  thenceforward 
his  warm  admirer  and  friend  ;  meantime  Miss  Sellwood's  fam- 
ily attempt  to  break  off  her  engagement  with  Tennyson  by 
forbidding  all  association  and  correspondence  between  them  ; 
in  1842  he  publishes  his  "  Poems  "  in  two  volumes,  and  this 
establishes  his  rank  as  then  the  greatest  living  poet ;  besides 
the  chief  poems  from  the  volumes  of  1830  and  1833  and  the 
others  just  mentioned,  these  volumes  contained  "  Locksley 
Hall,"  "Godiva,"  "  The  Two  Voices,"  "Ulysses,"  "A 
Vision  of  Sin,"  "Break,  Break,  Break,"  and  other  lyrics; 
meantime  what  little  capital  the  poet's  family  have  is  hope- 
lessly lost  by  an  unfortunate  investment  in  a  scheme  for  me- 
chanical wood-carving,  and  they  pass  through  "a  season  of 
real  hardship,"  during  which  Tennyson  suffers  so  seriously 
from  hypochondria  that  his  friends  despair  of  his  life  ;  his 
critical  condition  causes  friends  to  appeal  in  his  behalf  to  the 
prime  minister,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  in  September,  1845,  a 


TENNYSON 

pension  of  ^200  a  year  is  granted  to*  the  poet  from  the  civil 
list ;  the  specific  appeal  is  said  to  have  been  made  by  Monck- 
ton  Milnes,  who  won  Peel  by  reading  to  him  "Ulysses," 
although  the  prime  minister  had  known  nothing  of  Tennyson 
before. 

By  1846  the  "Poems"  reach  a  fourth  edition;  during 
this  year  Tennyson  is  boldly  assailed  by  Bulwer  Lytton  in  his 
"New  Timon,"  and  is  called  "Schoolmiss  Alfred,"  while 
his  claims  to  the  pension  are  challenged ;  Tennyson  replies 
vigorously  in  lines  entitled  "  The  New  Timon  and  the  Poets," 
which  appear  in  Punch  over  the  pseudonym  "  Alcibiades," 
having  been  sent  to  that  journal  by  John  Forster  without 
Tennyson's  knowledge;  a  week  later  Tennyson  publicly  ex- 
presses his  regret  and  recantation  of  the  whole  matter  in  lines 
entitled  "An  Afterthought,"  still  published  in  his  collected 
poems  under  the  head  of  "  Literary  Squabbles;  "  in  1847  he 
publishes  "  The  Princess,"  without  the  six  incidental  lyrics, 
which  were  added  in  the  third  edition,  in  1850  ;  "  The  Prin- 
cess "  reaches  five  editions  in  six  years,  but  does  not  add 
greatly  to  Tennyson's  popularity ;  in  June,  1850,  he  publishes 
anonymously  "  In  Memoriam,"  on  which  he  had  worked  at 
intervals  during  the  previous  seventeen  years  ;  its  authorship 
is  at  once  recognized  ;  the  public  welcomes  it  with  enthusiasm, 
but  the  critics  are  less  warm  in  their  praise;  the  poem  is  bit- 
terly attacked  by  party  theologians  and  by  some  reviewers  ; 
in  April,  1850,  on  the  death  of  Wordsworth,  the  laureateship 
was  offered  to  Rogers,  who  declined  it  on  the  ground  of  age ; 
then,  chiefly  because  of  Prince  Albert's  admiration  of  "In 
Memoriam,"  the  honor  is  offered  to  Tennyson  and  is  ac- 
cepted ;  the  sales  of  "  In  Memoriam  "  insure  to  Tennyson  an 
income  that  warrants  matrimony,  and  he  is  married  to  Miss 
Sellwood  June  13,  1850,  at  Shiplake-on-the-Thames,  where 
the  lovers  first  met  after  a  separation  of  ten  years  ;  in  after 
days  Tennyson  used  to  say,  < '  The  peace  of  God  came  into 
my  life  when  I  wedded  her." 


760  TENNYSON 

After  his  marriage  "Tennyson  settles  at  Chapel  House, 
Montpelier  Row,  Twickenham  ;  in  1851  he  writes  his  sonnet 
to  Macready  on  the  occasion  of  the  actor's  retirement  from 
the  stage;  in  July  of  the  same  year,  with  his  wife,  he  visits 
the  baths  of  Lucca,  Florence,  and  the  Italian  Lakes,  return- 
ing by  way  of  the  Splugen — a  tour  that  he  afterward  cele- 
brated in  "The  Daisy;"  later  in  1851  he  writes  several 
patriotic  poems,  including  "  Britains,  Hold  Your  Own  "  and 
"  All  Hands  Round,"  which  are  published  in  The  Examiner  ; 
in  August,  1852,  his  second  child,  a  son,  is  born  (the  first 
child  died  at  birth)  and  is  named  Hallam,  Henry  Hallam 
and  Frederick  Denison  Maurice  standing  godfathers ;  on  the 
death  of  Wellington,  in  November,  1852,  Tennyson  writes  his 
great  "  Ode  to  Wellington,"  which  appears  on  the  morning  of 
the  funeral,  and  excites  "all  but  universal  depreciation;  "  in 
1853,  while  visiting  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  the  poet  learns  of  a 
house  called  Farringford  for  rent  at  Freshwater,  and,  after  in- 
specting it  with  his  wife,  he  hires  it  with  the  privilege  of  a 
purchase  later  on ;  about  two  years  later  he  buys  it  with  the 
income  irom  his  poem  "  Maud,"  and  it  becomes  his  home 
during  the  greater  part  of  every  year  until  his  death  ;  one  ob- 
ject in  settling  at  Freshwater  was  to  escape  the  intrusions  on 
his  working  hours  incident  to  a  residence  near  London  ;  in 
March,  1854,  another  son  (Lionel)  is  born,  and  Tennyson 
arranges  for  an  edition  of  his  poems  to  be  illustrated  by  Mil- 
lais,  Holman  Hunt,  and  Rossetti ;  during  this  year  he  visits 
Glastonbury  and  other  places  connected  with  the  Arthurian 
legend,  preparatory  to  writing  his  "  Idylls  of  the  King,"  and 
also  works  on  (t  Maud  ;  "  in  December,  1855,  he  reads  of  the 
disastrous  charge  at  Balaclava,  and  writes  at  one  sitting  his 
"Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,"  which  is  printed  in  The 
Examiner  of  December  pth  ;  in  June,  1855,  the  University  of 
Oxford  confers  on  him  the  degree  of  D.C.L.,  and  in  the 
following  autumn  he  publishes  "Maud"  in  a  volume  con- 
taining also  "The  Daisy,"  "Ode  on  the  Duke  of  Well- 


TENNYSON  761 

ington,"  "The  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,"  "Break, 
Break,  Break,"  etc.  ;  "Maud"  is  at  first  received  with  vio- 
lent antagonism  and  even  derision  ;  not  discouraged,  Tenny- 
son continues  to  work  at  the  Arthurian  poems,  and  completes 
"  Enid  "  during  the  autumn  of  1856  ;  during  1858  he  com- 
pletes "  Guinevere,"  and  begins  his  dramatic  lyrics  in  mono- 
logues entitled,  respectively,  "  The  Grandmother  "  (published 
in  Once  a  Week  in  July,  1859,  with  an  illustration  by  Mil- 
lais)  and  "  Sea  Dreams  "  (published  in  Macmillarf  s  Magazine 
in  1860)  ;  in  the  autumn  of  1859  he  publishes  "The  Idylls 
of  the  King,"  which  are  at  once  received  with  great  popu- 
lar favor  ;  among  other  noted  men  who  praise  the  poems  are 
Jowett,  Macaulay,  Dickens,  and  Ruskin ;  from  this  time  till 
his  death  Tennyson's  popularity  remains  unabated  ;  in  1860 
he  visits  Cornwall,  Devonshire,  and  the  Scilly  Islands,  and  in 
1861  Auvergne  and  the  Pyrenees,  where  he  writes  "  All  along 
the  Valley,"  in  memory  of  his  visit  thirty  years  before  with 
Arthur  Hallam  ;  in  1861  he  prepares  a  new  edition  of  "The 
Idylls  of  the  King,"  and  adds  the  dedication  to  the  prince 
consort,  then  lately  deceased ;  during  1862  he  works  on 
"Enoch  Arden,"  has  his  first  introduction  to  the  Queen,  and 
makes  a  tour  through  Derbyshire  and  Yorkshire  in  company 
with  F.  T.  Palgrave;  during  1863  he  completes  "  Aylmer's 
Field,"  and  writes  his  "Welcome  to  Alexandra,"  on  the 
occasion  of  the  marriage  of  the  Prince  of  Wales;  in  1864 
he  publishes  the  volume  called  "Enoch  Arden,"  of  which 
60,000  copies  were  sold  at  once  ;  this  volume  contained, 
besides  "Enoch  Arden,"  "  Aylmer's  Field,"  "  Tithonus  " 
(reprinted  from  the  Cornhill Magazine),  "  The  Grandmother," 
"Sea  Dreams,"  and  "  The  Northern  Farmer:  Old  Style;" 
with  the  exception  of  "  In  Memoriam  "  this  became  the  most 
popular  volume  of  Tennyson's  works,  and  it  has  been  trans- 
lated into  Danish,  German,  Latin,  Dutch,  French,  Hungarian, 
and  Bohemian.  , 

Tennyson's  next  volume,  "The  Holy  Grail,"  appeared  in 


72  TENNYSON 

1869,  and  contained  also  "The  Passing  of  Arthur,"  "Pel- 
leas  and  Etarre,"  "The  Victim,"  "Wages,"  "  The  Higher 
Pantheism,"  and  "The  Northern  Farmer:  New  Style;" 
during  this  year  he  is  made  an  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge  ;  during  1868  he  builds  his  new  home,  Aid- 
worth,  near  Haslemere,  where  he  afterward  resides  during  a 
part  of  every  year;  in  1872  he  adds  "  Gareth  and  Lynette  " 
to  the  Arthurian  cycle ;  in  1873  he  declines  a  baronetcy 
offered  by  Gladstone,  and  in  1874  refuses  the  same  honor 
when  offered  by  Disraeli ;  in  1875  he  publishes  his  first  blank- 
verse  drama,  "Queen  Mary;"  although  not  popular  in  its 
tone,  this  drama  was  adapted  to  the  stage  by  Henry  Irving, 
and  was  successfully  presented  in  April,  1876  ;  during  1876 
Tennyson  publishes  his  other  drama,  "  Harold  ;  "  in  1879  he 
reprints  "  The  Lover's  Tale,"  based  on  a  story  of  Boccaccio, 
and  written  when  he  was  under  twenty  years  of  age,  printed 
in  1833,  and  then  distributed  only  among  a  few  personal 
friends ;  it  was  republished  only  because  it  was  being  exten- 
sively pirated;  in  December,  1879,  the  Kendals  produce 
Tennyson's  little  blank-verse  drama  "The  Falcon,"  also 
based  on  one  of  Boccaccio's  stories,  and  it  has  a  run  of  sixty- 
seven  nights;  this  drama  was  first  published  in  1884,  in  the 
same  volume  with  "The  Cup;"  in  March,  1880,  Ten- 
nyson accepts  an  invitation  to  stand  for  an  election  to  the 
lord  chancellorship  of  Glasgow  University,  but  promptly 
withdraws  his  name  on  learning  that  it  is  to  be  a  political 
contest  and  that  he  is  expected  to  represent  the  Conservative 
Party  ;  during  this  year,  under  the  advice  of  his  physician, 
he  seeks  better  health  by  a  tour,  with  his  son,  to  Venice, 
Bavaria,  and  the  Tyrol,  and  publishes  the  volume  called  "  Bal- 
lads and  Poems;"  this  volume  included  "The  Revenge," 
"Rizpah,"  "  The  Children's  Hospital,"  "The  First  Quar- 
rel," "The  Defence  of  Lucknow,"  and  "The  Northern 
Cobbler;"  during  1871  Tennyson's  drama  "The  Cup"  is 
successfully  presented,  and  he  sits  for  his  portrait  to  Millais; 


TENNYSON 

in  November,  1882,  another  drama,  "The  Promise  of  May," 
is  produced  with  but  little  success;  in  January,  1884,  after 
much  hesitation,  he  accepts  a  peerage  offered  by  the  Queen 
on  the  recommendation  of  Gladstone ;  during  this  year  he 
publishes  "The  Cup,"  "The  Falcon,"  and  his  tragedy  of 
"  Becket ;  "  in  1885  appears  "  Tiresias  and  Other  Poems," 
including  a  prologue  to  Tennyson's  friend,  Edward  FitzGerald 
(then  lately  deceased),  besides  "  The  Ancient  Sage"  and  the 
Irish  dialect  poem  "To-morrow;"  he  is  deeply  affected 
by  the  death  of  his  second  son,  Lionel,  who  died  in  April, 
1886,  while  on  the  return  voyage  from  a  visit  to  Lord  Duf- 
ferin  in  India;  in  December,  1886,  Tennyson  publishes  a 
volume  containing  "The  Praise  of  May"  and  "Locksley 
Hall  Sixty  Years  After;  "  during  1887  he  cruises  in  a  friend's 
yacht,  visits  Devonshire  and  Cornwall,  prepares  another  vol- 
ume of  poems  for  publication,  and  writes  "Vastness"  (pub- 
lished in  Macmillari 's  Magazine)  and  "  Owd  Roa  ;  "  during 
1888  he  is  dangerously  ill  with  rheumatic  gout ;  in  the  spring 
of  1889  he  makes  a  voyage  in  the  yacht  of  his  friend  Lord 
Brassey,  and  in  the  following  December  publishes  "  Demeter 
and  Other  Poems,"  including  "Merlin  and  the  Gleam,"  an 
autobiographical  allegory,  and  "Crossing  the  Bar,"  which 
was  written  one  day  while  crossing  the  Solent  on  his  annual 
journey  from  Aldworth  to  Farringford ;  he  is  in  feeble  health 
during  1890,  but  in  1891  he  completes  for  Daly,  the  Ameri- 
can manager,  the  drama  "Robin  Hood,"  which  was  pro- 
duced in  New  York  under  the  title  "  The  Foresters ;  "  during 
1892  Tennyson  writes  his  "  Lines  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke 
of  Clarence,"  cruises  to  Jersey,  and  visits  London  ;  during 
this,  his  last  year,  he  also  looks  over  the  proofs  of  an  intended 
volume  of  poems,  "  The  Death  of  QEnone,"  and  takes  a  deep 
interest  in  the  forthcoming  production  of  "  Becket  "  by  Irv- 
ing; he  dies  at  Aldworth,  October  6,  1892,  and  is  buried  in 
the  "Poets'  Corner"  at  Westminster  Abbey,  many  of  the 
most  famous  men  of  England  acting  as  his  pall-bearers. 


764  TENNYSON 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   CRITICISM    ON   TENNYSON. 

Brooke,  S.  A.,  "Tennyson,  his  Art,"  etc.  New  York,  1894,  Putnam. 
Stedman,  E.  C,  "Victorian  Poets."  Boston,  1876,  Osgood,  150-223. 
Van  Dyke,  H.,  "The  Poetry  of  Tennyson."  New  York,  1889,  Scrib- 

ner,  v.  index. 
Taine,  H.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1875,  Holt, 

3:   391-418. 
Kingsley,   C.,    "  Literary  and    General    Lectures."     New  York,    1890, 

Macmillan,  103-127. 
Henley,   W.   E.,    "Views  and  Reviews."     New  York,  1890,   Scribner, 

154-158. 
Whipple,   E.    P.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."     Boston,    1861,   Ticknor,  i: 

333-346. 

Taylor,  B.,  "  Essays  and  Notes."     New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  1-37. 
Hutton,   R.    H.,    "Essays,   Theological  and  Literary."     London,  1877, 

Daldy  &  Co.,  2  :   303-369. 
Rearden,  T.  H.,  "  Petrarch  and  other  Essays."     San  Francisco,  1893, 

Murdoch,  43-104. 

Cooke,  G.  W.,  "  Poets  and  Problems."     Boston,  1887,  Ticknor,  57-87. 
Spedding,  J.,  "  Reviews  and  Discussions. "     London,  1879,  Kegan  Paul 

&Co.,  277-299. 

Bagehot,  W.,    "Literary  Studies."     Hartford,  1891,  Travellers'  Insur- 
ance Co.,  2  :   338-390- 
Home,  R.  H.,  "A  New  Spirit  of  the  Age."     New  York,  1844,  Harper, 

193-211. 
Masson,  D.,  "  In  the  Footsteps  of  the  Poets."    New  York,  1893,  Ishester, 

333-38L 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  "  Essays  toward  a  Critical  Method."     London,  1889, 

Unwin,  233-283. 
Stirling,    J.    H.,    "  Jerrold,    Tennyson,    and    Macaulay."     Edinburgh, 

1868,  Edmonton  &  Douglass,  51-112. 
Fields,  J.  T.,  "  Yesterdays  with  Authors."     Boston,  1875,   Osgood,  v. 

index. 
Bayne,   P.,  "Lessons  from  My  Masters."     New  York,    1879,    Harper, 

203-364. 
Bayne,  P.,  "Essays  in  Biography  and  Criticism."     Boston,  1857,  Gould 

&  Lincoln,  50-146. 
Hallam,  A.   H.,  "The  Lyrical  Poems  of  Tennyson."     London,   1893, 

Macmillan,  87-138. 


'ENNYSON  765 

Saintsbury,   G.,    "  Corrected  Impressions."     New  York,    1895,    Dodd, 

Mead  &  Co.,  21-41. 

Devey,  J.,  "  Modern  English  Poets."     London,  1873,  Moxon,  275-337. 
Tuckerman,    H.    T.,    "Thoughts    on  the   Poets."     New    York,    1846, 

Francis,  273-281. 
Oliphant,     Mrs.,     "The    Victorian    Age."     New    York,     1892,     Tait, 

203-215. 
Innes,    A.    O.,    "Seers  and    Singers."     London,    1893,   Constable,    v. 

index. 
Wilde,   Lady  T.  H.   S.,  "Notes  on  Men,"  etc.      London,    1891,   Ward 

&  Downey,  286-326. 
Walters,   J.    C.,    "In  Tennyson  Land."     London,    1890,    Redway,    v. 

index. 
Luce,  M.,  "New  Studies  in  Tennyson."     London,    1893,  J.   Baker  & 

Son,  v.  index. 
Wilson,    J.,    "Essays."      Edinburgh,    1856,    Blackwood   (Works),  6: 

109-153- 
Brimley,  G.,    "Cambridge    Essays."     London,    1855,    Parker    &    Son, 

i:   226-281. 

Waugh,  A.,  "Alfred  Tennyson."     London,  1893,  Heinemann,  v.  index. 
Tainsh,  E.  C. ,  "  A  Study  of  the  Works  of  Tennyson."     London,  1893, 

Macmillan,  v.  index. 
Jacobs,  J.,    "Alfred  Tennyson,  an  Appreciation."     London,   1892,  D. 

Mitt,  v.  index. 
Dawson,  W.  J.,  "The  Makers  of  Modern  English."     New  York,  1890, 

Whittaker,  169-270. 
Walters,}.   M.,  "Tennyson,   Poet,  Philosopher,"  etc.     London,  1893, 

Kegan  Paul  &  Co.,  v.  index. 
Gilfillan,   G.,    "  Literary  Portraits."     Edinburgh,    1852,  J.    Hogg,    2 : 

148-160. 
Dowden,   E.,    "Studies  in  Literature."     London,  1878,  Kegan  Paul  & 

Co.,  v.  index. 
Sterling,  J.,  "  A  Review  of  Tennyson's  Poems."     London,  1848,  Parker 

&  Son,  412-463. 
Cheney,  J.  V.,  "The  Golden  Guess."     Boston,  1892,    Lee  &  Shepard, 

161-201. 
Howitt,   W.,    "Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,   1863, 

Routledge,  691-703. 

Contemporary  Review,  62  :  761-785  (S.  A.  Brooke). 
Critic,   21  :  202-211   (H.  Van  Dyke  and  others);   21  :  285-290  (W.  J. 

Rolfe  and  others) ;    10:  i  (Whitman) ;   6 :  50  (W.  J.  Rolfe). 
Nation,  21  :  60,  61  (C.  E.  Norton). 


766  TENNYSON 

New  Review,  7  :  513-532  (E.  Gosse). 

Review  of  Reviews,  6:   557-570  (W.  T.   Stead);   6:  553-556   (H.    W. 

Mabie). 

Harper's  Monthly,  86:  309-312  (A.  Fields)  ;   68  :  20-41  (A.  T.  Ritchie). 
Our  Day,  II  :  19-36  (W.  T.  Stead). 

Dial  (Chicago),  14:  168,  169  (J.  Burroughs)  ;  14  :  101,  102  (E.  E.  Hale). 
Christian  Union,  46:  786-970  (H.  W.  Mabie). 
Nineteenth  Century,  35:  761-774  (H.  D.   Traill)  ;   23:  127-129  (A.  C. 

Swinburne). 

Poet-Lore,  7 :  428-435  {W.  J.  Rolfe). 
National  Magazine,  20:  454,  and   14:  694  (A.  Austin). 
Century,   24:   32-37  (J.  A.  Symonds) ;   23:    539-544,  and  20:   502-510 

(H.  Van  Dyke) ;    15  :    105  (E.  Gosse). 
Arena,  9 :  582-592  (W.  H.  Savage). 

American  Catholic  Quarterly,  18  :  101-121  (G.  P.  Lathrop). 
Scribner's  Magazine,   6  :  242-248  (H.  Van  Dyke) ;   8  :   100-105  (E.  C. 

Stedman). 

New  Princeton  Review,  4  :  56-60  (H.  Van  Dyke). 
Poet-Lore,  3:  10-17  (A.  S.  Cook). 
Presbyterian  Review,  4  :  681-709  (H.  Van  Dyke). 
Quarterly  Review,  106  :  454-485  (W.  E.  Gladstone). 
Fraser's  Magazine,  42  :  245-255  (C.  Kingsley). 
Macmillan's  Magazine,   27:    143-167    (R.    H.    Hutton) ;    3:    258-262 

(S.  Colvin). 

Appleton's  Magazine,  7  :  353-356  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
International  Review,  4:  397-418  (B.  Taylor). 
Fortnightly  Review,  35:  129-153  (A.  C."  Swinburne). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  28:  513-526  (E.  C.  Stedman). 
Christian  Examiner,  33:  237-244  (C.  C.  Felton). 
Westminster  Review,  30 :  402-424  (J.  S.  Mill). 
Galaxy,  20  :  393-402  (H.  James,  jr.). 
North  American  Review,  123  :  216-221  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Ideal  Portraiture. — "  With  few  exceptions,  Tenny- 
son's most  poetical  types  of  men  and  women  are  not  sub- 
stantial beings  but  beautiful  shadows,  which,  like  the  phan- 
toms of  a  stereopticon,  dissolve  if  you  examine  them  too  long 
and  closely." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"What  first  attracted  people  were  Tennyson's  portraits  of 


TENNYSON  767. 

women.  .  .  .  Each  word  of  them  is  like  a  tint,  curiously 
shaded  and  deepened  by  the  neighboring  tint,  with  all  the 
boldness  and  results  of  the  happiest  refinement."  —  Tame. 

' 'In  one  respect  I  think  'In  Memoriam  '  surpasses  all  his 
other  works.  I  mean  in  the  exquisite  tone  of  the  pictures  it 
contains." — £.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Mr.  Tennyson  sketches  females  as  never  did  Sir  Thomas 
Lawrence.  His  portraits  are  delicate,  his  likenesses  perfect, 
and  they  have  life,  character,  and  individuality." — Professor 
Wilson  [Christopher  North]. 

"  His  color  and  outline  in  conveying  the  visual  image  are 
based  on  a  study  of  natural  fact  and  a  practice  in  transferring 
it  to  words  which  are  equally  beyond  comparison. 
Let  any  one  of  a  thousand  of  his  descriptions  body  itself 
before  the  eye,  and  the  picture  will  be  like  the  things  seen  in 
a  dream,  but  firmer  and  clearer." — George  Saintsbury. 

"  Observe  how  the  poet  gazes  face  to  face  upon  what  he 
portrays,  how  distinctly  he  hears  every  word  falling  from  the 
lips  of  his  characters.  He  never  slurs,  he  never  generalizes. 
.  .  .  He  sees  the  apple-blossom  as  it  sails  on  the  rill ; 
the  garden  walk  is  bordered  with  lilac.  He  lets  you  hear  the 
words  of  the  simple,  kindly  rustics,  and  you  see  the  flowers 
plucked  for  the  wreath,  to  bind  the  brow  of  the  little  child. 
.  .  .  It  [the  portrait  of  Lilian]  reminded  me  of  nothing 
I  had  ever  read  in  poetry  or  in  prose.  JsTo  strong  feeling  was 
produced,  but  I  experienced  a  distinct  sensation  of  pleasant- 
ness, like  that  of  seeing  a  delicately  tinted,  quaintly  shaped 
china  cup  ;  or  finding  a  curiously-veined,  richly-flushed  shell 
on  the  seashore." — Peter  Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  At  length  I  saw  a  lady  within  call, 

Stiller  than  chisel'd  marble,  standing  there  ; 
A  daughter  of  the  gods,  divinely  tall 
And  most  divinely  fair, 


768  TENNYSON 

Her  loveliness  with  shame  and  with  surprise 
Froze  my  swift  speech  :  she,  turning  on  my  face 

The  star-like  sorrows  of  immortal  eyes, 
Spoke  slowly  in  her  place." 

— A  Dream  of  Fair  Women. 

"  O  sweet  pale  Margaret, 
O  rare  pale  Margaret, 
What  lit  your  eyes  with  tearful  power, 
Like  moonlight  on  a  falling  shower  ? 
Who  lent  you,  love,  your  mortal  dower 
Of  pensive  thought  and  aspect  pale, 
Your  melancholy  sweet  and  frail 
As  perfume  of  the  cuckoo-flower  ? 
From  the  westward-winding  flood, 
From  the  evening-lighted  wood, 
From  all  things  outward  you  have  won 
A  tearful  grace,  as  tho'  you  stood 
Between  the  rainbow  and  the  sun. 
The  very  smile  before  you  speak, 
That  dimples  your  transparent  cheek, 
Encircles  all  the  heart,  and  feedeth 
The  senses  with  a  still  delight 
Of  dainty  sorrow  without  sound, 
Like  the  tender  amber  round, 
Which  the  moon  around  her  spreadeth, 
Moving  thro'  a  fleecy  night." — Margaret* 

"  Mystery  of  mysteries, 
Faintly  smiling  Adeline, 
Scarce  of  earth  nor  all  divine, 
Nor  unhappy,  nor  at  rest, 
But  beyond  expression  fair 
With  thy  floating  flaxen  hair  ; 
Thy  rose  lips  and  full  blue  eyes 
Take  the  heart  from  out  my  breast 
Wherefore  those  dim  looks  of  thine, 
Shadowy,  dreaming  Adeline  ?  " — Adeline. 


2.  Picturesqueness.— ''Many    years    ago,    as    I    have 
always  remembered,  on  the  appearance  of  the  first  four  '  Idylls 


TENNYSON  769 

of  the  King,'  one  of  the  greatest  painters  living  pointed  out  to 
me,  with  a  deep  word  of  rapturous  admiration,  the  wonderful 
breadth  of  beauty  and  the  perfect  force  of  truth  in  a  single 
verse  of  Elaine, 

'  And  white  sails  flying  on  the  yellow  sea.' 

And  I  know  once  more  the  truth  of  what  I  had 
never  doubted — that  the  eye  and  the  hand  of  Mr.  Tennyson 
may  always  be  trusted,  at  once  and  alike,  to  see  and  express 
the  truth.  Again, 

'  Its  stormy  crests  that  smote  against  the  skies.' 

Only  Victor  Hugo  himself  can  make  words  lighten  and  thun- 
der like  these." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  In  the  description  of  pastoral  nature  in  England  no  one 
has  ever  surpassed  Tennyson.  The  union  of  fidelity  to  nature 
and  extreme  beauty  is  scarcely  to  be  found  in  an  equal  degree 
in  any  other  writer.  ...  In  Tennyson  there  is  no  ten- 
dency to  inventiveness  in  his  descriptions  of  scenery ;  he  con- 
tents himself  with  the  loveliness  of  the  truth  seen  through  the 
medium  of  such  emotion  as  belongs  to  the  subject  in  hand." 
— R.  H.  Home. 

"  An  idyllic  or  picturesque  mode  of  conveying  [his]  senti- 
ment is  the  one  natural  to  this  poet,  if  not  the  only  one  per- 
mitted by  his  limitations.  In  this  he  surpasses  all  the  poets 
since  Theocritus.  .  .  .  He  is  a  born  observer  of  physi- 
cal nature,  and,  whenever  he  applies  an  adjective  to  some 
object  or  passingly  alludes  to  some  phenomenon,  which  others 
have  but  noted,  is  almost  infallibly  correct.  He  has  the 
unerring  first  touch  which  in  a  single  line  proves  the  artist ; 
and  it  justly  has  been  remarked  that  there  is  more  true  Eng- 
lish landscape  in  many  an  isolated  stanza  of  '  In  Memoriam  ' 
than  in  the  whole  of  «  The  Seasons,'  that  vaunted  descriptive 
poem  of  a  former  century. " — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  poetry  of  Tennyson  is  replete  with  magnificent  pict- 
ures, flushed  with  the  finest  hues  of  language,  and  speaking 
49 


770  TENNYSON 

to  the  eye  and  the  mind  with  the  vividness  of  reality.  We 
not  only  see  the  object  but  feel  the  associations  connected 
with  it.  His  language  is  penetrated  with  imagination,  and 
the  felicity  of  his  epithets  especially  leaves  nothing  to  desire." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Quiet  scenes  and  soft  characters  he  delights  to  portray, 
and  he  portrays  them  with  what  the  painters  call  a  very  soft 
touch."— C.  C.  Felton. 

"  In  Mr.  Tennyson  alone,  as  we  think,  the  spirit  of  the 
middle  age  is  perfectly  reflected;  its  delight,  not  in  the 
'sublime  and  picturesque,'  but  in  the  green  leaves  and  spring 
for  their  own  sake.  .  .  .  Give  him  but  such  scenery  as 
that  which  he  can  see  in  every  parish  in  England,  and  he  will 
find  it  a  fit  scene  for  an  ideal  myth.  .  .  .  It  is  the 
mystic,  after  all,  who  will  describe  Nature  most  simply, 
because  he  sees  most  in  her ;  because  he  is  most  ready  to 
believe  -that  she  will  reveal  to  others  the  same  message  that 
she  has  revealed  to  him.  .  .  .  He  has  become  the  great- 
est naturalistic  poet  that  England  has  seen  for  centuries."  — 
Charles  Kingsley. 

"  The  power  which  makes  Tennyson's  idylls  so  unique  in 
their  beauty  is,  I  think,  his  wonderful  skill  in  creating  a  per- 
fectly real  and  living  scene,  ...  a  scene  every  feature 
of  which  helps  to  make  the  emotion  delineated  more  real  and 
vivid.  ...  Is  there,  in  the  whole  range  of  English 
poetry,  such  a  picture  of  a  summer  twilight  as  this  : 

'  By  night  we  lingered  on  the  lawn,'  etc.  ? 

I  know  no  descriptive  poetry  that  has  the  delicate  spiritual 
genius  of  that  passage,  its  sweet  mystery,  its  subdued  lustre, 
its  living  truth,  its  rapture  of  peace." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

II  The  wonderful  succession  of  cartoons  in  the  '  Palace  '  and 
the  '  Dream  '  exhibit  this  [combination  of  music  and  pictures] 
in  his  very  earliest  stage,     ...     the  power  of  filling  eye 
and  ear  at  once.     .     .     .     The  attraction  of  the  poem  '  In 


TENNYSON  771 

[emoriam '  is  .  .  .  ,  above  all,  in  those  unmatched 
landscapes  and  sketches  of  which  the  poet  is  very  prodigal." 
—  George  Saintsbury. 

"  Every  line  of  his  poems  on  Nature  is  a  picture  in  a  new 
style  of  art,  something  which  had  not  'been  done  before 
in  this  fashion  and  finish ;  no,  not  even  by  Wordsworth, 
whose  love  of  flowers  and  birds  is  less  pictorial  but  more 
instinct  with  the  life  of  the  things  he  describes. 
Scattered  through  these  poems  [1842]  are  lovely,  true,  and 
intimate  descriptions  of  Nature  in  England,  done  with  an  art 
which  never  forgets  itself  and  which  seems  sometimes  too 
elaborate  in  skill.  '  The  Gardener's  Daughter  '  is  alive  with 
such  descriptions.  Step  by  step  we  move  on,  the  changing 
scene  is  painted.  We  walk  through  the  landscape  with  Ten- 
nyson. ' ' — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  In  the  poetic  reproduction  of  visual  impressions  Tenny- 
son's superiority  to  all  but  the  very  greatest  of  English  poets, 
and  his  equality  with  those  greatest,  is  so  well  established  and 
was  displayed  in  such  an  overwhelming  abundance  of  exam- 
ples, that  to  quote  from  but  a  few  of  his  pages  would  be  to  fill 
my  own.  One  could  not  pass  by  his  image  of  banished 

fancy  : 

'  sadder  than  a  single  star 
That  sets  at  twilight  in  a  land  of  reeds,' 

nor  a  hundred  other  passages  ...  in  which  the  poet 
has  set  before  us  a  picture  with  a  few  strokes  of  his  enchanted 
brush,  and  of  each  and  all  of  which  the  same  question  would 
have  to  be  asked:  Where  does  the  commanding  merit  of 
the  material  end  and  the  victorious  power  of  art  begin?" 
— H.  D.  Traill. 

"  There  is  a  voluptuous  glow  in  this  coloring,  warm  and 
rich  as  that  of  Titian,  yet  often  subdued  by  the  distinct  out- 
line and  chastened  tone  of  the  Roman  school;  while  the 
effect  of  the  whole  is  elevated  by  the  pure  expressiveness  of 
Raphael." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 


772  TENNYSON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Now  fades  the  last  long  streak  of  snow, 
Now  burgeons  every  maze  of  quick 
About  the  flowering  squares,  and  thick 
By  ashen  roots  the  violets  blow. 

"  Now  rings  the  woodland  loud  and  long, 
The  distance  takes  a  lovelier  hue, 
And,  drown'd  in  yonder  living  blue, 
The  lark  becomes  a  sightless  song. 

"  Now  dance  the  lights  on  lawn  and  lea, 
The  flocks  are  whiter  down  the  vale, 
And  milkier  every  milky  sail 
On  winding  stream  or  distant  sea." — In  Memoriam. 

"  Lightly  he  laugh'd,  as  one  that  read  my  thought, 
And  on  we  went ;  but  ere  an  hour  had  pass'd, 
We  reached  a  meadow  slanting  to  the  North  ; 
Down  which  a  well-worn  pathway  courted  us 
To  one  green  wicket  in  a  private  hedge  ; 
This,  yielding,  gave  into  a  grassy  walk 
Thro'  crowded  lilac-ambush  trimly  pruned  ; 
And  one  warm  gust,  full-fed  with  perfume,  blew 
Beyond  us  as  we  enter'd  in  the  cool. 
The  garden  stretches  southward.     In  the  midst 
A  cedar  spread  his  dark-green  layers  of  shade. 
The  garden-grasses  shone,  and  momently 
The  twinkling  laurels  scatter'd  silver  lights." 

—  The  Gardener's  Daughter. 

"  To-night  the  winds  begin  to  rise 

And  roar  from  yonder  dropping  day  ; 
The  last  red  leaf  is  whirled  away, 
The  rooks  are  blown  about  the  skies  ; 

"  The  forest  cracked,  the  waters  cuiTd, 
The  cattle  huddled  on  the  lea  ; 
And  wildly  dashed  on  tower  and  tree 
The  sunbeam  strikes  along  the  world." 

— In  Memoriam. 


TENNYSON  773 

3.  Exquisite  Finish— Smooth  Melody. — "  In  tech- 
nical elegance,  as  an  artist  in  verse,  Tennyson  is  the  greatest 
of  modern  poets.  Other  masters,  old  and  new,  have  surpassed 
him  in  special  instances  ;  but  he  is  the  only  one  who  rarely 
nods,  and  who  always  finishes  his  verse  to  the  extreme.  .  .  . 
Here  is  the  absolute  sway  of  metre,  compelling  every  rhyme 
and  measure  needful  to  the  thought ;  here  are  sinuous  alliter- 
ations, unique  and  varying  breaks  and  pauses,  winged  flights 
and  falls,  the  glory  of  sound  and  color  everywhere  present, 
or,  if  missing,  absent  of  the  poet's  free  will.  .  .  .  The 
blank  verse  of  the  «  Morte  d' Arthur  '  and  «  Guinevere  '  is  the 
perfection  of  English  rhythm  ;  nor  has  Tennyson  of  late  years 
uttered  a  poem  without  that  objective  foresight  which  sees  the 
end  from  the  beginning  and  makes  the  whole  work  round  and 
perfect.  A  great  artist,  a  strong  and  conscientious  singer 
holding  his  imagination  quite  in  his  own  hand.  In  Tennyson 
we  have  the  strong  repose  of  art  whereof  the  world  is  slow  to 
tire.  .  .  .  The  fulness  of  his  art  evades  the  charm  of 
spontaneity.  .  .  .  Tennyson's  original  and  fastidious 
art  is  of  itself  a  theme  for  an  essay.  The  poet  who  studies  it 
may  well  despair,  he  can  never  excel  it ;  .  .  .  its  strength 
is  that  of  perfection  ;  its  weakness,  the  over-perfection  which 
marks  a  still-life  pa4nter.  .  .  .  Let  me  conclude  my  re- 
marks on  his  art  with  a  reference  to  his  unfailing  taste  and 
sense  of  the  fitness  of  things.  This  is  neatly  exemplified  in 
the  openings,  and  especially  in  the  closings,  of  his  idylls.  The 
artistic  excellence  of  his  work  has  been,  from  the  first,  so  dis- 
tinguished that  lay  critics  are  often  at  a  loss  how  to  estimate  this 
poet.  Tennyson's  art-instincts  are  always  perfect;  he  does  the 
fitting  thing,  and  rarely  seeks  through  eccentric  and  curious 
movements  to  attract  popular  regard.  .  .  .  E.  A.  Poe  said 
that  '  in  perfect  sincerity  '  he  pronounced  him  '  the  noblest 
poet  that  ever  lived.'  If  he  had  said  the  '  noblest  artist,'  and 
confined  this  judgment  to  the  lyrists  of  the  English  tongue,  he 
probably  would  have  made  no  exaggeration." — E.  C.  Stedman. 


774  TENNYSON 

"  The  perception  of  harmony  lies  in  the  very  essence  of  the 
poet's  nature,  and  Mr.  Tennyson  gives  magnificent  proofs  that 
he  is  endowed  with  it." — Wordsworth. 

"  But  of  others  [besides  Shakespeare]  only  Spenser  had 
hitherto  drawn  such  pictures  as  those  of  the  '  Palace '  and  the 
'  Dream/  and  Spenser  had  done  them  in  far  less  terse  fashion 
than  Tennyson.  Only  Keats,  Shelley,  Coleridge,  Blake,  per- 
haps Beddoes,  and  a  few  Elizabethans  had  poured  into  the 
veins  of  language  the  ineffable  musical  throb  of  a  score  of 
pieces,  from  '  Claribel  '  to  '  Break  !  Break  !  '  and  not  one  of 
them  had  done  it  in  quite  the  same  way.  Only  Milton,  with 
Thomson  as  a  far  distant  second,  had  impressed  upon  non- 
dramatic  blank  verse  such  a  swell  and  surge  as  that  of  '  (E- 
none.'  And  about  all  these  different  kinds  and  others  there 
clung  and  rang  a  peculiar  dreamy  slow  music,  which  was  heard 
for  the  first  time,  and  which  has  never  been  reproduced — a 
music  which  in  the  '  Lotos  Eaters/  impossible  as  it  might 
have  seemed,  adds  a  new  charm  after  the  '  Faerie  Queen/ 
after  the  '  Castle  of  Indolence/  after  the  '  Revolt  of  Islam/  to 
the  Spenserian  stanza,  which  makes  the  stately  verse  of  the 
'  Palace  '  and  the  '  Dream  '  tremble  and  cry  with  melodious 
emotion,  and  which  accomplishes  the  miracle  of  the  poet's 
own  dying  swan  in  a  hundred  other  poems  all  flooded  over 
with  eddying  song.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  greater  about 
it  [*'  In  Memoriam  "]  than  the  way  in  which,  side  by  side  with 
the  prevailing  undertone  of  the  stanza,  the  individual  pieces 
vary  the  music  and  accompany  it,  so  to  speak,  in  duet  with  a 
particular  melody.  It  must  have  been  already  obvious  to 
good  ears  that  no  greater  master  of  harmonies — perhaps  that 
none  so  great — had  ever  lived  ;  but  '  In  Memoriam  '  set  the 
fact  finally  and  irrevocably  on  record.  ...  In  all  other 
respects  (except  faulty  rhymes  and  occasional  accumulations 
of  tribrachs)  his  versification  is  by  far  the  most  perfect  of  any 
English  poet,  and  results  in  a  harmony  positively  incompara- 
ble. .  .  .  Take  any  one  of  a  myriad  of  lines  of  Tenny- 


TENNYSON  775 

son,  and  the  mere  arrangement  of  vowels  and  consonants  will 
be  a  delight  to  the  ear.  .  .  .  The  same  music  continued 
to  sound — with  infinite  variety  of  detail,  but  with  no  breach 
of  general  character — from  '  Claribel  '  itself  to  '  Crossing  the 
Bar.'  .  .  .  If  you  want  quick  music  you  must  go  else- 
where for  it  or  be  content  with  the  poet  not  at  his  best.  But 
in  the  other  mode  of  linked  and  long-drawn-out  sweetness 
he  has  hardly  any  single  master  and  no  superior."  —  George 
Saintsbury. 

"  Tennyson  possesses  a  consummate  science  of  rhythm,  the 
rarest  resources  of  phrase,  taste,  grace,  distinction,  every  sort 
of  clearness,  of  research,  of  refinement.  He  is  the  author  of 
lyric  pieces  unequalled  in  any  other  language,  some  of  infinite 
delicacy,  some  of  engrossing  pathos,  some  quivering  like  the 
blast  of  a  mighty  horn." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"He  has  performed  some  miracles  of  versification,  and 
achieved  verbal  melodies,  especially  in  his  ballads,  that  vin- 
dicate most  sweetly  our  so-called  harsh  Saxon  idiom." — H. 
T.  Tuckerman. 

"His  song  can  steal  forth,  catch  by  a  faint  but  serial  pre- 
lude the  ear,  quick  to  seize  on  the  true  music  of  Olympus, 
and  then,  with  growing  and  ever-swelling  symphonies,  still 
more  ethereal,  still  fuller  of  wonder,  love,  and  charmed  woe, 
can  travel  on  amid  the  listening  and  spellbound  multitude, 
an  invisible  spirit  of  melodious  power,  expanding,  soaring 
aloft,  sinking  deep,  coming  now  as  from  the  distant  sea,  and 
filling  all  the  summer  air,  so  that  it  can  triumph  in  its  own 
celestial  energy.  The  poet  himself  would  rather  not  be 
found.  .  .  .  The  poetry  of  Tennyson,  like  that  of 
Shakespeare,  seems  to  possess  a  music  of  its  own.  It  is  evi- 
dently evolved  amid  the  intense  play  of  melodies  which  are 
as  much  a  part  of  the  individual  mind  itself  as  the  harmonies 
of  nature  are  a  part  of  nature.  Like  Shakespeare,  Tennyson 
is  especially  fond  of,  or  rather  haunted  by,  musical  refrains, 
the  airs  that  are  not  invented  but  struck  out  \  that  cannot  be 


776  TENNYSON 

conceived    by    any  labor  of  thought,  but   are  inspired." 
William  Howitt. 

"  Taking  the  blank  verse  of  the  '  Idylls '  through  and  through, 
as  a  work  of  art,  it  is  more  finished,  more  expressive,  more 
perfectly  musical  than  that  of  (  Paradise  Lost.'  .  .  .  He 
has  never  done  anything  more  pure  and  perfect  than  these 
songs  from  '  The  Princess,'  clear  and  simple  and  musical  as 
the  chime  of  silver  bells,  deep  in  their  power  of  suggestion  as 
music  itself.  .  .  .  «  Sweet  and  Low,'  '  Ask  me  no  more,' 
and  '  Blow,  Bugle,  Blow,'  will  be  remembered  and  sung  as 
long  as  English  hearts  move  to  the  sweet  melody  of  love  and 
utter  its  secret  meanings  in  the  English  tongue. 
These  lyrics  [in  "  Maud  "]  are  magical,  unforgetable ;  they 
give  an  immortal  beauty  to  the  poem.  ...  It  ["De- 
meter"]  is  an  example  of  that  opulent,  stately,  and  musical 
blank  verse  in  which  Tennyson  is  the  greatest  master  since 
Milton  died." — Henry  van  Dyke. 

"Though  Tennyson,  of  course,  does  not  bring  to  its  exe- 
cution a  voice  of  the  mighty  volume  of  Milton's,  he  has  not 
only  written  what  is  far  more  perfect  as  a  work  of  art  than 
'  Paradise  Lost '  .  .  .  but  a  poem  which  shadows  forth 
the  ideal  faith  of  his  own  time.  Lord  Tennyson  was  an 
artist  even  before  he  was  a  poet ;  .  .  .  the  eye  for 
beauty,  grace,  and  harmony  of  effect  was  even  more  em- 
phatically one  of  his  original  gifts  than  the  voice  for  poetic 
utterance  itself.  .  .  .  He  is  one  of  the  greatest  masters 
of  meter,  both  simple  and  sonorous,  that  the  English  language 
has  ever  known." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"The  art  stands  up  in  his  poems  self-proclaimed  and  not 
as  any  mere  modification  of  thought  and  language  but  the 
operation  of  a  separate  and  definite  power  in  the  human 
faculties.  .  .  .  Whatever  he  writes  is  a  complete  work — 
he  holds  the  unity  of  it  as  firmly  in  his  hand  as  his  CEnone's 
Paris  holds  the  apple — and  there  is  nothing  broken  or  in- 
complete in  these  two  full  volumes.  His  few  '  fragments ' 


TENNYSON  777 

are  entire  in  themselves  and  suggest  the  remainders." — R.  H. 
Home. 

"It  is  to  note,  too,  that  the  Laureate  of  to-day  deals  with 
language  in  a  way  that  to  the  Tennyson  of  the  beginning  was 
impossible.  ...  In  those  early  years  he  was  rather  Ben- 
venuto  than  Michael  Angelo,  he  was  more  of  a  jeweller  than 
a  sculptor  ;  the  phrase  was  too  much  for  him,  the  inspiration 
of  the  incorrect  too  little.  Most  interesting  is  it  to  the  artist 
to  remark  how  impatient  of  rhyme  and  how  confident  irr 
rhyme  is  the  whilom  poet  of  '  Oriana.'  .  .  .  Now  it  is  the 
art ;  it  is  the  greater  Shakespeare,  the  consummate  Rembrandt. 
.  .  .  He  was  an  artist  in  words.  .  .  .  From  the  first, 
Lord  Tennyson  was  an  exemplar,  and  now,  in  these  new  utter- 
ances, his  supremacy  is  completely  revealed." —  W.  E.  Henley. 

"Before  him  no  poet  dared  to  use  sound  or  metre  in  the 
same  manner  as  the  architect  and  sculptor  use  form,  and  the 
painter  form  and  color.  It  was  a  new  delight,  both  to  the 
ear  and  to  the  unrecognized  sense  which  stands  between  sen- 
suousness  and  pure  intelligence.  Because,  more  than  most 
poets,  he  consciously  possessed  this  power,  he  rapidly  learned 
how  to  use  it.  His  '  Mariana  '  is  an  extraordinary  piece  of 
minute  and  equally  finished  detail.  The  fastidious  care  with 
which  every  image  is  wrought,  every  bar  of  the  movement 
adjusted  to  the  next  and  attuned  to  the  music  of  all,  every 
epithet  chosen  for  point,  freshness,  and  picturesque  effect, 
every  idea  restrained  within  the  limits  of  close  and  clear  ex- 
pression— these  virtues  so  intimately  fused  became  a  sudden 
delight  for  all  lovers  of  poetry,  and  for  a  time  affected  their 
appreciation  of  its  more  unpretending  and  artless  forms." 
— Bayard  Taylor. 

"  I  know  of  no  blank  verse  which  reminds  me  of  '  GEnone  ' 
in  its  general  structure,  its  musical  variations  of  rhythm,  and 
its  verbal  finish;  it  is  simply  perfect." — R.  If.  Stoddard. 

"He  was  the  greatest  artist  in  words  that  Cambridge  has 
ever  produced." — Lowell. 


77$  TENNYSON 

"  There  is  no  finer  ear  than  Tennyson's,  nor  more  com- 
mand of  the  keys  of  language.  Color,  like  the  dawn,  flows 
over  the  horizon  from  his  pencil  in  waves  so  rich  that  we  do 
not  miss  the  central  form." — Emerson. 

"  On  the  going  out  of  the  imaginative,  sentimental,  and 
Satanic  school,  Tennyson  appeared  exquisite.  All  forms  and 
ideas  which  had  pleased  them  were  found  in  him,  but  puri- 
fied, modulated,  set  in  a  splendid  style."  —  Tame. 

"  His  pictures  of  rural  scenery,  among  the  finest  in  the 
language,  give  the  inner  spirit  as  well  as  the  outward  form  of 
the  objects,  and  represent  them,  also,  in  their  relation  to  the 
mind  which  is  gazing  on  them." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"So  perfect  is  his  rhythmical  instinct  in  general  that  he 
seems  to  see  with  his  ear." — E.  A.  Poe. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Bird's  love  and  bird's  song 
Flying  here  and  there, 
Bird's  song  and  bird's  love, 
And  you  with  gold  for  hair  ! 
Bird's  song  and  bird's  love, 
Passing  with  the  weather, 
Men's  song  and  men's  love, 
To  love  once  and  forever. 

Men's  love  and  bird's  love, 

And  women's  love  and  men's ! 

And  you  my  wren  with  a  crown  of  gold, 

You  my  queen  of  the  wrens  ! 

You  the  queen  of  the  wrens — 

We'll  be  birds  of  a  feather, 

I'll  be  the  king  of  the  queen  of  the  wrens, 

And  all  in  a  nest  together." — The  Window. 

"  There  lies  a  vale  in  Ida,  lovelier 
Than  all  the  valleys  of  Ionian  hills. 
The  swimming  vapor  slopes  athwart  the  glen, 
Puts  forth  an  arm,  and  creeps  from  pine  to  pine, 


TENNYSON  779 

And  loiters,  slowly  drawn.     On  either  hand 
The  lawns  and  meadow- ledges  midway  down 
Hang  rich  in  flowers,  and  far  below  them  roars 
The  long  brook  falling  thro'  the  clov'n  ravine 
In  cataract  after  cataract  to  the  sea. 
Behind  the  valley  topmost  Gargarus, 
Stands  up  and  takes  the  morning  :  but  in  front 
The  gorges,  opening  wide  apart,  reveal, 
Troas  and  llion's  column'd  citadel, 
The  crown  of  Troas." — CEnone. 

"  She  is  coming,  my  own,  my  sweet ; 

Were  it  ever  so  airy  a  tread, 
My  heart  would  hear  her  and  beat, 

Were  it  earth  in  an  earthy  bed ; 
My  dust  would  hear  her  and  beat, 

Had  I  lain  for  a  century  dead  ; 
Would  start  and  tremble  under  her  feet 

And  blossom  in  purple  and  red." — Maud. 

4.  Occasional  Passion— Vehemence.— "  The  tour- 
nament scene  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  book  of  '  The  Princess ' 
is  the  most  vehement  and  rapid  passage  in  the  whole  range  of 
Tennyson's  poetry.  By  an  approach  to  the  Homeric  swift- 
ness, it  presents  a  contrast  to  the  laborious  movement  of  much 
of  his  narrative  verse.  ...  He  does  not,  like  Browning, 
catch  the  secret  of  a  master-passion,  nor,  like  the  old  drama- 
tist, the  very  life  of  action." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  There  was  a  fire  of  passion  under  this  smooth  surface.  A 
genuine  poetic  temperament  never  fails  in  this.  It  feels  too 
acutely  to  be  at  peace." — Taine. 

"  When  Tennyson  attempts  to  rise  into  passionate  expres- 
sion, as  when  Pelleas  turns  and  strikes  his  curse  at  Ettarre  and 
her  harlot  towers,  he  becomes  only  violent  without  power. 
That  vivid  sketch  at  the  beginning,  of  the  wood  and  of  the 
bracken  burning  around  it  in  the  sunlight,  cannot  keep  up  its 
speed  and  fire  to  the  end.  Nor  is  there  a  single  piece  of  noble 
or  passionate  writing  in  the  whole  of '  The  Idylls  of  the  King,' 


780  TENNYSON 

save  at  the  end,  where  Pelleas  breaks  into  the  hall  of  Arthur 
swordless." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  Never  since  the  beginning  of  all  poetry  were  the  twin 
passions  of  terror  and  pity  more  divinely  done  into  deathless 
words  or  set  to  more  perfect  and  profound  magnificence  of 
music." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  '  Fatima'  is  full  of  true  and  vehement  and  yet  musical 
passion,  and  suggests  the  strong  flow  of  Lesbian  poetry  and 
particularly  the  well-known  fragment  of  Sappho  addressed 
to  a  woman." — -John  Sterling. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  O  my  cousin,  shallow  hearted  !     O  my  Amy,  mine  no  more 

0  the  dreary,  dreary  moorland  !     O  the  barren,  barren  shore  ! 

"  Falser  than  all  fancy  fathoms,  falser  than  all  songs  have  sung, 
Puppet  to  a  father's  threat,  and  servile  to  a  shrewish  tongue  ! 

"  What  is  this  ?  his  eyes  are  heavy  :  think  not  they  are  glazed 

with  wine. 
Go  to  him  :  it  is  thy  duty  :  kiss  him  :  take  his  hand  in  thine. 

"  It  may  be  my  lord  is  weary,  that  his  brain  is  overwrought  ; 
Soothe  him  with  thy  finer  fancies,  touch  him  with  thy  lighter 
thought. 

'*  He  will  answer  to  the  purpose,  easy  things  to  understand — 
Better  thou  wert  dead  before   me,  tho'   I  slew  thee  with  my 
hand." — Locksley  Hall. 

"  Ah— you,  that  have  lived  so  soft,  what  should  you  know  of  the 

night, 

The  blast  and  the  burning  shame  and  the  bitter  frost  and  the 
fright  ? 

1  have  done  it,  while  you  were  asleep — you  were  only  made  for 

the  day. 

I  have  gather' d  my  baby  together — and  now  you  may  go  your 
way. 


TENNYSON  781 

"Do  you  think    I  was   scared    by  the  bones?     I  kiss'd  'em,  I 

buried  'em  all — 

I  can't  dig  deep,  I  am  old — in  the  night  by  the  churchyard  wall. 
My  Willy '11  rise  up  whole  when  the  trumpet  of  judgment  '11 

sound, 
But  I  charge  you  never  to  say  that  I  laid  him  in  holy  ground. 

"  And  if  he  be  lost — but  to  save  my  soul,  that  is  all  your  desire  : 
Do  you  think  that  I  care  for  my  soul  if  my  boy  be  gone  to  the 

fire? 
I  have  been  with  God  in  the  dark — go,  go,  you  may  leave  me 

alone — 

You  never  have  borne  a  child — you  are  just  as  hard  as  stone." 

— Rizpah. 

"  Why  do  they  prate  of  the  blessings  of  Peace  ?  we  have  made 

them  a  curse  ; 

Pickpockets,  each  hand  lusting  for  all  that  is  not  its  own  ; 
And  lust  of  gain,  in  the  spirit  of  Cain,  is  it  better  or  worse 
Than  the  heart  of  the  citizen  hissing  in  war  on  his  own  hearth- 
stone ? 

"  And  the  vitriol  madness  flushes  up  in  the  ruffian's  head, 
Till  the  filthy  by-lane  rings  to  the  yell  of  the  trampled  wife, 
And  chalk  and  alum  and  plaster  are  sold  to  the  poor  for  bread, 
And  the  spirit  of  murder  works  in  the  very  means  of  life. 

"  When  a  Mammonite  mother  kills  her  babe  for  a  burial  fee, 
And  Timour-Mammon  grins  on  a  pile  of  children's  bones, 
Is  it  peace  or  war  ?  better,  war  !  loud  war  by  land  and  sea, 
War  with  a  thousand  battles,  and  shaking  a  hundred  thrones." 

— Maud. 

5.  Ornateness— Ornamentation  of  the  Common- 
place.— Walter  Bagehot,  one  oftheacutest  of  modern  critics, 
takes  Tennyson's  "  Enoch  Arden  "  as  a  specimen  of  ornate  art 
as  distinguished  from  pure  art  [Shelley's]  and  grotesque  art 
[Browning's].  Many  of  Tennyson's  other  poems  illustrate 
the  same  quality. 

"The    essence  of  ornate   art  is     ...     to  accumulate 


TENNYSON 

around  the  typical  object  everything  which  can  be  said  about 
it,  every  thought  that  can  be  associated  with  it,  without  im- 
pairing the  essence  of  the  delineation.  .  .  .  Nothing  is 
described  as  it  is  ;  everything  has  about  it  an  air  of  some- 
thing else.  .  .  .  That  is  to  say,  that  the  function  of  the 
poet  is  to  introduce  a  '  gay  confusion,'  a  rich  medley,  which 
does  not  exist  in  the  actual  world.  ...  As  Enoch  was 
and  must  be  coarse,  in  itself  the  poem  must  depend  for  a 
charm  on  a  'gay  confusion,'  on  a  splendid  accumulation  of 
impossible  accessories.  .  .  .  Tennyson  has  painted  with 
pure  art  ...  the  '  Northern  Farmer,'  and  we  all  know 
what  a  splendid,  what  a  living  thing  he  has  made  of  it.  He 
could,  if  he  only  would,  have  given  us  the  ideal  sailor  in  like 
manner ;  the  ideal  of  a  natural  sailor,  we  mean — the  charac- 
teristic present  man  as  he  is  and  lives.  .  .  .  Mr.  Tenny- 
son has  made  it  his  aim  to  call  off  the  stress  of  fancy  from  real 
life,  to  occupy  it  otherwise,  to  bury  it  with  pretty  acces- 
sories. .  .  .  The  story  of  Enoch  Arden  as  he  has  en- 
hanced and  presented  it,  is  a  rich  and  splendid  composite  of 
imagery  and  illustration.  Yet  how  simple  that  story  is  in 
itself.  A  sailor  who  sells  fish  breaks  his  leg,  gets  dismal, 
gives  up  selling  fish,  goes  to  sea,  is  wrecked  on  a  desert  island, 
stays  there  some  years,  on  his  return  finds  his  wife  married  to 
a  miller,  speaks  to  a  landlady  on  the  subject,  and  dies.  Told 
in  the  pure  and  simple,  unadorned  and  classical  style,  this 
story  would  not  have  taken  three  pages.  ...  He  has 
given  us  a  sailor  covered  all  over  with  ornament  and  illustra- 
tion, because  he  then  wanted  to  describe  an  unreal  type  of 
fancied  man — not  sailors  as  they  are  but  sailors  as  they  might 
be  wished.  .  .  .  But  nothing  in  this  class  of  subjects  is 
more  remarkable  than  the  power  he  possesses  of  communicat- 
ing to  simple  incidents  and  objects  of  reality  preternatural 
spirit  as  part  of  the  enchantment  of  the  scene.  We  are  fortu- 
nate in  not  having  to  hunt  out  of  past  literature  an  illustration 
of  ornate  style,  .  .  .  Mr.  Tennyson  has  just  given  one  ad- 


TENNYSON  783 

mirable  in  itself  and  most  characteristic  of  the  defects  and  merits 
of  this  style.  .  .  .  That  art  is  the  appropriate  art  for  an 
unpleasing  type.  Many  of  the  characters  of  real  life,  if  they 
were  brought  distinctly,  prominently,  and  plainly  before  the 
mind,  as  they  really  are,  if  shown  in  their  inner  nature,  their 
actual  essence,  are  doubtless  very  unpleasant.  They  would  be 
horrid  to  meet  and  horrid  to  think  of." — Walter  Bagehot. 

"  It  may  not  be  the  highest  imaginable  sign  of  the  poetic 
power  or  native  inspiration  that  a  man  should  be  able  to 
grind  a  beauty  out  of  a  deformity  or  carve  a  defect  into  a  per- 
fection ;  but  whatever  may  be  the  comparative  worth  of  this 
peculiar  faculty,  no  poet  ever  had  it  in  a  higher  degree  or 
cultivated  it  with  more  patient  and  strenuous  industry  than 
Mr.  Tennyson." — A.  C.  Swinburne. 

"  For  the  most  part  he  wrote  of  the  every  day  loves  and 
duties  of  men  and  women  ;  of  the  primal  pains  and  joys  of 
humanity  ;  of  the  aspirations  and  trials  which  are  common  to 
all  ages  and  all  classes  and  independent  even  of  the  diseases  of 
civilization,  but  he  made  them  new  and  surprising  by  the  art 
which  he  added  to  them,  by  beauty  of  thought,  tenderness  of 
feeling,  and  exquisiteness  of  shaping." — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  He  gave  them  [his  poems]  too  much  adornment  and 
polishing  ;  he  seemed  like  an  epicurean  in  style  as  well  as  in 
beauty." — Tame. 

"  Warmed  by  his  imagination,  clad  in  his  felicitous  lan- 
guage, or  penetrated  by  his  refined  sentiment,  the  hackneyed 
theme  or  common  object  are  reproduced  with  a  new  and  en- 
dearing beauty." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  It  ["  Gareth  and  Lynette  "]  is  drawn  like  a  series  of 
vignettes  in  interlacing  arabesque  patterns,  .  .  .  remind- 
ing us  not  only  of  the  detached  cleverness  with  which  it 
abounds  but  also  of  the  effort  to  make  them  clearer.  .  .  . 
Without  his  intention  or  will,  or  even  expectation,  he  has 
stimulated  into  existence  a  school  of  what  might  be  called 
decorative  poetry." — Bayard  Taylor. 


784  TENNYSON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  While  Enoch  was  abroad  on  wrathful  seas, 
Or  often  journeying  landward  ;  for  in  truth 
Enoch's  white  horse  and  Enoch's  ocean  spoil, 
In  ocean-smelling  osier,  and  his  face, 
Rough-reddened  with  a  thousand  winter  gales, 
Not  only  to  the  market  cross  were  known, 
But  in  the  leafy  lanes  behind  the  down, 
Far  as  the  portal-warding  lion-whelp 
And  peacock  yew-tree  of  the  lonely  Hall, 
Whose  Friday  fare  was  Enoch's  ministering." 

— Enoch  Arden. 

11  He  spoke,  and  one  among  his  gentlewomen 
Display'd  a  splendid  silk  of  foreign  loom, 
Where,  like  a  shoaling  sea,  the  lovely  blue 
Play'd  into  green,  and  thicker  down  the  front 
With  jewels  ran  the  sward  with  drops  of  dew, 
When  all  night  long  a  cloud  clings  to  the  hill, 
And  with  the  dawn  ascending  lets  the  day 
Strike  where  it  clung  :  so  thickly  shone  the  gems." 

— Geraint  and  Enid. 

"  One  look'd  all  rosetree,  and  another  wore 
A  close-set  robe  of  jasmine  sown  with  stars  : 
This  had  a  rosy  sea  of  gilly  flowers 
About  it ;  this,  a  milky-way  on  earth, 
Like  visions  of  the  Northern  dreamer's  heavens, 
A  lily-avenue  climbing  to  the  doors ; 
One,  almost  to  the  martin-haunted  eaves, 
A  summer  burial  deep  in  the  hollyhocks." 

— Aylmer's  Field. 

6.  Moral  Elevation— Optimism. — "  Without  being  a 
pedant  he  is  moral ;  ...  he  does  not  rebel  against  society 
and  life  ;  he  speaks  of  God  and  the  soul  nobly,  tenderly,  without 
ecclesiastical  prejudice.  .  .  .  We  may  listen  when  we  quit 


TENNYSON  785 

lim,  without  being  shocked  by  the  contrast,  to  the  grave  voice 
of  the  master  of  the  house,  who  reads  evening  prayers  before 
the  kneeling  servants.  .  .  .  He  has  not  rudely  trenched 
upon  the  truth  and  passion.  He  has  risen  to  the  height  of 
noble  and  tender  sentiments.  He  has  gleaned  from  all  nature 
and  history  what  was  most  lofty  and  amiable." — Taine. 

"Tennyson  always  speaks  from  the  side  of  virtue  ;  and  not 
of  that  new  and  strange  virtue  which  some  of  our  later  poets 
have  exalted,  and  which,  when  it  is  stripped  of  its  fine  gar- 
ments, turned  out  to  be  nothing  else  than  the  unrestrained 
indulgence  of  every  natural  impulse;  but  rather  of  that  old- 
fashioned  virtue  whose  laws  are  '  self- reverence,  self-control, 
self-knowledge,'  and  which  finds  its  highest  embodiment  in 
the  morality  of  the  New  Testament.  .  .  .  There  is  a 
spiritual  courage  in  his  work,  a  force  of  faith  which  con- 
quers doubt  and  darkness,  a  light  of  inward  hope  which  burns 
dauntless  under  the  shadow  of  death.  Tennyson  is  the  poet 
of  faith  ;  faith  as  distinguished  from  cold  dogmatism  and  the 
acceptance  of  traditional  creeds  ;  faith  which  does  not  ignore 
doubt  and  mystery,  but  triumphs  over  them  and  faces  the  un- 
known with  fearless  heart.  The  poem  entitled  '  Vastness  '  is 
an  expression  of  this  faith.  .  .  .  Nothing  that  Tennyson 
has  ever  written  is  more  beautiful  in  body  and  soul  than 
*  Crossing  the  Bar.'  .  .  .  The  effect  of  Christianity  upon 
the  poetry  of  Tennyson  may  be  felt,  first  of  all,  in  its  general 
moral  quality.  By  this  it  is  not  meant  that  he  is  always  preach- 
ing. But  at  the  same  time  the  poet  can  hardly  help  revealing, 
more  by  tone  and  accent  than  by  definite  words,  his  moral 
sympathies.  .  .  .  He  is  in  no  sense  a  rose-water  optimist. 
But  he  is  in  the  truest  sense  a  meliorist.  .  .  .  He  rests 
his  faith  on  the  uplifting  power  of  Christianity.  .  .  .  The 
chief  peril  which  threatens  the  permanence  of  Christian  faith 
and  morals  is  none  other  than  the  malaria  of  modern  letters — 
an  atmosphere  of  dull,  heavy,  faithless  materialism.  Into  this 
narcotic  air  the  poetry  of  Tennyson  blows  like  a  pure  wind 
50 


786  TENNYSON 

from  a  loftier  and  serener  height.  .  .  .  Tennyson  is  es- 
sentially and  characteristically  a  poet  with  a  message.  His 
poetry  does  not  merely  exist  for  the  sake  of  its  own  perfec- 
tion of  form.  It  is  something  more  than  the  sound  of  one 
who  has  a  lovely  voice  and  can  play  skilfully  upon  an  instru- 
ment. It  is  a  poetry  with  a  meaning  and  a  purpose.  It  is  a 
voice  that  has  something  to  say  to  us  about  life.  .  .  . 
When  we  read  them  [Tennyson's  Poems]  we  feel  our  hearts 
uplifted,  we  feel  that,  after  all,  it  is  worth  while  to  struggle 
toward  the  light,  it  is  worth  while  to  try  to  be  upright  and 
generous  and  true  and  loyal  and  pure,  for  virtue  is  victory, 
and  goodness  is  the  only  fadeless  and  immortal  crown. 
He  teaches  the  gospel  of  personal  love  and  help,  which  is 
Christianity.  .  .  .  The  secret  of  the  poet's  influence  must 
lie  in  his  spontaneous  witness  to  the  reality  and  supremacy  of 
the  moral  life.  His  music  must  thrill  us  with  the  conviction 
that  the  humblest  child  of  man  has  a  duty,  an  ideal,  a  destiny. 
He  must  sing  of  justice  and  of  love  as  a  sure  reward,  a  stead- 
fast law,  the  safe  port  and  haven  of  the  soul.  .  .  .  There 
is  hardly  one  of  Tennyson's  poems  in  which  this  testimony  is 
not  clearly  and  distinctly  uttered.  The  ideal  which  shines 
through  all  of  his  poetry  is  simply  the  example  of  '  Him  who 
wrought  with  human  hands,  the  creeds  of  creeds,'  etc.  We 
have  turned  to  the  pages  of  *  In  Memoriam  '  for  that  human 
consolation  which  is  only  less  than  divine.  I  suppose  that 
there  is  only  one  Book  which,  for  these  last  forty  years,  has 
done  more  to  comfort  sorrow." — Henry  van  Dyke. 

"Like  Robert  Browning,  Lord  Tennyson,  though  he  had 
his  moods  of  sorrow  and  perplexity,  was  an  optimist,  who  had 
achieved  his  right  to  optimism  by  the  fighting  down  of  despair 
and  doubt." — F.  W.  Farrar. 

"Tennyson,  like  every  true  poet,  has  the  strongest  feeling 
of  the  spiritual  and  almost  mystic  character  of  the  associations 
attaching  to  the  distant  sail  which  takes  the  ship  on  its  lonely 
journey  to  an  invisible  port,  and  has  more  than  once  used  it 


TENNYSON 

to  lift  the  mind  into  the  attitude  of  hope  or  trust." — R.  H. 
Button. 

"  Mr.  Tennyson's  sense  of  a  beneficent  unfolding  in  our 
life  of  a  divine  purpose,  lifts  him  through  and  over  the  com- 
mon dejections  of  men." — Edward  Dowden. 

1  'Alfred  Tennyson  has  given  many  a  fatal  blow  to  many 
an  old  narrow  maxim  in  his  poems;  he  has  breathed  into  his 
later  ones  the  generous  and  the  victorious  breath  of  noble 
philanthropy,  the  offspring  of  the  great  renovator — the  Chris- 
tian religion.  .  .  .  His  moral  views,  whether  directly  or 
indirectly  conveyed,  are  healthy,  manly,  and  simple  ;  and  the 
truth  and  delicacy  of  his  sentiments  is  attested  by  the  depth 
of  pathos  which  he  can  wake  from  the  commonest  incidents, 
told  in  the  simplest  manner,  yet  deriving  all  their  interest 
from  the  manner  of  telling." — W.  M.  Howitt. 

"I  should  say  he  was  pre-eminently  the  prophet  of  faith. 
His  message  exhorted  all  to  have  faith  in  man  and  in  God. 
He  held  that  when  men  believed  in  man  they  found  ground 
to  believe  in  God."—  W.  T.  Stead. 

"  The  chastity  and  moral  elevation  of  this  volume  ["  Idylls 
of  the  King"],  its  essential  and  profound  though  not  didac- 
tic Christianity,  are  such  as  cannot  be  matched  throughout 
the  circle  of  English  literature  in  conjunction  with  an  equal 
power." — W.  E.  Gladstone. 

"  He  wrote  only  of  that  of  which  he  loved  to  write,  that 
which  moved  him  to  joy  or  reverence,  that  which  he  thought 
of  good  report  for  its  loveliness.  Even  the  things  he  did  as 
Poet  Laureate,  when,  if  ever,  he  might  have  been  untrue  to 
this,  have  no  tinge  of  the  world  about  them.  .  .  .  When 
the  moral  conduct  of  life,  when  the  great  sanctions  of  moral- 
ity are  to  be  represented,  Tennyson  impassions  them  and  lifts 
them  into  poetry.  This  is  one  of  his  greatest  powers." — 
Stopford  Brooke. 

"  Hundreds  of  Tennyson's  lines  and  phrases  have  become 
fixed  in  the  popular  memory;  and  there  is  scarcely  one  of 


788  TENNYSON 

them  that  is  not  suggestive  or  consoling  or  heartening.  He 
delights  to  sing  of  honor  and  chastity  and  fidelity,  and  his 
most  voluptuous  measures  celebrate  no  greater  indulgence 
than  indolence  and  the  sensuous  delight  of  life.  His  con- 
scious teaching  has  always  been  wholesome  and  elevating." 
— Bayard  Taylor. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  held  it  truth  with  him  who  sings 
To  one  clear  harp  in  divers  tones, 
That  men  may  rise  on  stepping-stones 
Of  their  dead  selves  to  higher  things." 

— In  Memoriam. 
"  O  lift  your  natures  up  : 

Embrace  our  aims  ;  work  out  your  freedom.    Girls, 
Knowledge  is  now  no  more  a  fountain  sealed  : 
Drink  deep,  until  the  habits  of  the  slave  ; 
The  sins  of  emptiness,  gossip  and  spite 
And  slander,  die.     Better  not  be  at  all 
Than  not  be  noble." — The  Princess. 

"  Oh  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill, 
To  pangs  of  nature,  sins  of  will, 
Defects  of  doubt,  and  taints  of  blood  ; 

"  That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet ; 
That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroy'd, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete  ; 

"  That  not  a  worm  is  cloven  in  vain  ; 
That  not  a  moth  with  vain  desire 
Is  shrivell'd  in  a  fruitless  fire, 
Or  but  subserves  another's  gain. 

"  Behold  we  know  not  anything  ; 

I  can  but  trust  that  good  shall  fall 
At  last— far  off— at  last,  to  all, 
And  every  winter  change  to  spring."— In  Memoriam. 


TENNYSON  789 

7.  Biblical  Flavor  and  Diction. — It  has  been  said  that 
if  every  Bible  in  existence  were  to  be  entirely  destroyed,  the 
cardinal  doctrines  of  Christianity  could  be  determined  by  the 
biblical  references  in  Shakespeare's  plays.  The  same  is  true 
in  a  great  degree  of  Tennyson.  Van  Dyke  collects  from  his 
poems  no  less  than  three  hundred  explicit  references  to  the 
Bible,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Christian  spirit  that  pervades 
every  page. 

"When  we  come  to  speak  of  the  biblical  scenes  and 
characters  to  which  Tennyson  refers,  we  find  so  many  that  we 
have  difficulty  to  choose.  ...  It  would  be  impossible 
even  to  enumerate  all  of  Tennyson's  allusions  to  the  life  of 
Christ,  from  the  visit  of  the  Magi,  which  appears  in  the 
'  Morte  d'Arthur,'  and  « The  Holy  Grail '  down  to  the  lines  in 
'  Balin  and  Balan  '  which  tell  of  '  that  same  spear  wherewith 
the  Roman  pierced  the  side  of  Christ.'  .  .  .  One  cause 
of  his  popularity  is  because  there  is  so  much  of  the  Bible  in 
Tennyson.  How  much,  few  even  of  his  ardent  admirers 
begin  to  understand.  '  And  the  wicked  cease  from 

troubling,  and  the  weary  are  at  rest,'  is  perhaps  the  best  il- 
lustration of  Tennyson's  felicitous  use  of  words  of  the  Script- 
ure. But  there  are  others,  hardly  less  perfect,  in  the  wonder- 
ful sermon  which  the  rector  in  '  Aylmer's  Field  '  delivers 
after  the  death  of  Edith  and  Leolin.  It  is  a  mosaic  of  Bible 
language,  most  curiously  wrought,  and  fused  into  one  living 
soul  by  the  heart  of  an  intense  sorrow.  *  The  Idylls  of  the 
King  '  are  full  of  delicate  and  suggestive  allusions  to  the 
Bible." — Henry  van  Dyke. 

"  Not  all  the  musical  charm  of  Tennyson's  poetry,  nor  its 
peerless  art,  nor  its  luxuriousness  of  imagination,  nor  its 
marvellous  pathos  has  so  fully  invested  it  with  the  quality  that 
endures  as  has  his  loyalty  to  the  revelation  of  God  found  in 
the  Holy  Scripture  and  his  association  of  his  own  song  with 
that  word  which  '  liveth  and  abideth  for  ever.'" — W.  E. 
Gladstone. 


790  TENNYSON 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Cast  all  your  cares  on  God  ;  that  anchor  holds. 
Is  He  not  yonder  in  the  uttermost 
Parts  of  the  morning  ?     If  I  flee  to  these 
Can  I  go  from  Him  ?  and  the  sea  is  His, 
The  sea  is  His,  he  made  it." — Enoch  Arden. 

"  Strong  Son  of  God,  immortal  Love, 

Whom  we,  that  have  not  seen  Thy  face, 
By  faith,  and  faith  alone,  embrace, 
Believing  where  we  cannot  prove ; 

**  Thine  are  these  orbs  of  light  and  shade  ; 
Thou  madest  life  in  man  and  brute  ; 
Thou  madest  Death  ;  and  lo,  Thy  foot 
Is  on  the  skull  which  Thou  hast  made. 

"  Thou  wilt  not  leave  us  in  the  dust  : 

Thou  madest  man,  he  knows  not  why, 
He  thinks  he  was  not  made  to  die  ; 
And  Thou  hast  made  him  ;  Thou  art  just. 

"  And  all  is  well,  tho'  faith  and  form 
Be  sundered  in  the  night  of  fear  ; 
Well  roars  the  storm  to  those  that  hear 
A  deeper  voice  across  the  storm." — In  Memoriam. 

"  And  tho'  thou  numberest  with  the  followers 
Of  one  who  cried,  '  Leave  all  and  follow  me,' 
Thee  therefore  with  His  light  about  thy  feet, 
Thee  with  His  message  ringing  in  thine  ears, 
Thee  shall  thy  brother  man,  the  Lord  from  Heaven, 
Born  of  a  village  girl,  carpenter's  son, 
Wonderful,  Prince  of  Peace,  The  Mighty  God,     . 
Count  the  more  base  idolater  of  the  two." 

— Aylmer's  Field. 

'     8.  Yearning— Infinite  Regret.— This  is  the  key-note 

'  of  Tennyson's  masterpiece,  and  is  characteristic  of  very  many 

of  his  other  poems.     While  he  is  not  a  pessimist,  and  while 

he  has  not  the  maddening  thirst  for  the  unknown  that  charac- 


TENNYSON  7Qt 

terizes  Shelley,  his  muse  is  often  pensive,  and  delights  in 
dwelling  upon  that  which  is  "loved  and  lost." 

"  But  then  the  song  ["  Break,  Break,  Break  "]  returns  again 
to  the  helpless  breaking  of  the  sea  at  the  foot  of  the  crags  it 
cannot  climb,  not  this  time  to  express  the  inadequacy  of 
human  speech  to  express  human  yearnings  but  the  defeat  of 
those  very  yearnings  themselves.  .  .  .  He  can  conceive 
with  the  subtlest  power  the  passionate  longing  for  death  of  a 
mortal  endowed  with  immortality,  doomed  like  Tithonus  to 
outlive  all  life  and  joy  and  tremble  at  the  awful  prospect  of  a 
solitary  eternity  of  decay.  .  .  .  The  '  Passing  of  Arthur ' 
contains  lines  resonant  with  the  highest  chords  of  spiritual 
yearning  and  bewildered  trust,  lines  which  echo  and  re-echo 
in  one's  imagination  like  the  dying  tones  of  the  organ  in  a 
great  cathedral's  aisles." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  The  wisdom,  yearnings,  aspirations  of  a  noble  mind  are 
here  [in  "  In  Memoriam  "]  ;  the  poet's  imagination,  shut  in 
upon  itself,  strives  to  irradiate  with  inward  light  the  mystic 
problems  of  life." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  note  of  restrained  and  tender  melancholy  has  always 
been  one  of  the  chief  features  of  Tennyson's  poetry.  It  is  not 
obtrusive,  but  it  is  pervasive  ;  it  is  rarely  bitter  or  cynical, 
but  it  is  always  there.  It  is  apparent  in  the  choice  of  subject 
even  in  those  early  poems  ["  Juvenilia  "].  Death  and  change 
strike  the  key-note  of  the  volume." — W.  J.  Dawson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Dark  house,  by  which  once  more  I  stand 
Here  in  the  long  unlovely  street, 
Doors,  where  my  heart  was  used  to  beat 
So  quickly,  waiting  for  a  hand. 

"  A  hand  that  can  be  clasped  no  more — 
Behold  me,  for  I  cannot  sleep  ; 
And  like  a  guilty  thing  I  creep 
At  earliest  morning  to  the  door. 


792  TENNYSON 

"  He  is  not  here  ;  but  far  away 
The  noise  of  life  begins  again, 
And  ghastly  thro'  the  drizzling  rain 
On  the  bald  street  breaks  the  blank  day." 

— In  Memoriam. 
"  And  the  stately  ships  go  on 
To  their  haven  under  the  hill  ; 
But  oh  for  the  touch  of  a  vanish'd  hand, 
And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still ! 

"  Break,  Break,  Break, 
At  the  foot  of  thy  crags,  O  Sea  ! 
But  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me." 

—  To  E.  L.,  on  his  Travels  in  Greece. 

"  Oh  that 'twere  possible 
After  long  grief  and  pain 
To  find  the  arms  of  my  true  love 
Round  me  once  again  ! 

"  — A  shadow  flits  before  me, 
Not  thou,  but  like  to  thee  : 
Ah  Christ,  that  it  were  possible 
For  one  short  hour  to  see 
The  souls  we  loved,  that  they  might  tell  us 
What  and  where  they  be. " — Maud. 

9.  Dramatic  Power. — "  I  would  not  be  surprised  to 
hear  that  any  true  critic  would  rate  '  Queen  Mary,'  whether 
in  dramatic  force  or  in  general  power,  below  '  Henry  VIII.,' 
but  my  own  impression  is  that  it  is  a  decidedly  finer  work  of 
dramatic  art.  .  .  .  The  great  poet  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury will  certainly  never  be  regarded  as  a  great  dramatist. 
But  that,  being  the  great  lyric  poet  he  is,  he  should  be  so 
great  even  as  he  is  in  drama,  will  always  be  his  singular  dis- 
tinction."— It.  If.  Hutton. 

"  His  greatest  achievement  still  is  that  noblest  of  modern 
episodes,  the  canto  entitled  '  Guinevere,'  surcharged  with 


TENNYSON  793 

tragic  pathos  and  high  dramatic  power.  He  never  has  so 
reached  the  passio  vera  of  the  early  dramatists  as  in  this  im- 
posing scene." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  It  cannot,  indeed,  be  doubted  that  if  Tennyson  had 
devoted  himself  to  the  dramatic  form  from  the  first  he  might 
have  been  original  and  masterly  in  that  as  he  has  been  in 
lyrism.  All  along  he  has  given  striking  proofs  of  a  power 
to  seize  and  portray  character  in  phases  and  wholes." — -J.  M. 
Robertson. 

"  His  dramatic  experiments,  like  '  Queen  Mary/  are  not, 
on  the  whole,  successful,  though  it  would  be  unjust  to  deny 
dramatic  power  to  the  poet  who  has  written,  upon  the  one 
hand  'Guinevere'  and  the  'Passing  of  Arthur,'  and  on  the 
other  the  homely  dialectic  monologue  of  the  '  Northern 
Farmer.'  .  .  .  The  interview  between  Arthur  and  his 
fallen  queen  is  marked  by  a  moral  sublimity  and  a  tragic  in- 
tensity which  move  the  soul  as  nobly  as  any  scene  in  modern 
literature." — Henry  A.  Beers. 

"  Tennyson  lacks  the  dramatic  quality,  but  he  possesses  a 
faculty  which  is  sometimes  mistaken  for  it — the  representative 
faculty.  It  is  present  in  the  '  Northern  Farmer/  '  The  North- 
ern Cobbler/  etc.,  which  may  be  clever  character  studies,  but 
which  certainly  are  not  dramatic  poems." — JZ.  H.  Stoddard. 

11  With  a  force  of  dramatic  sympathy  which  it  would  be 
quite  reasonable  to  compare  with  Shakespeare's,  Tennyson 
enters  into  the  person  of  the  girl  who  is  about  to  die,  Iphi- 
genia,  and  enables  the  imaginative  reader  to  see  through  her 
eyes,  to  gasp  and  sigh  with  her  in  her  swooning  anguish.  All 
is  intensely  real." — Peter  Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  To  whom  replied  King  Arthur,  much  in  wrath  : 
'  Ah,  miserable  and  unkind,  untrue, 
Unknightly,  traitor-hearted  !     Woe  is  me  ! 
Authority  forgets  a  dying  king, 


794  TENNYSON 

Laid  widow' d  of  the  power  in  his  eye 

That  bowed  the  will.     I  see  thee  what  thou  art ; 

For  thou,  the  latest  left  of  all  my  knights, 

In  whom  should  meet  the  offices  of  all, 

Thou  wouldst  betray  me  for  the  precious  hilt ; 

Either  from  lust  of  gold,  or  like  a  girl 

Valuing  the  giddy  pleasure  of  the  eyes. 

Yet,  for  a  man  may  fail  in  duty  twice, 

And  the  third  time  may  prosper,  get  thee  hence  : 

But,  if  thou  spare  to  fling  Excalibur, 

I  will  arise  and  slay  thee  with  my  hands.' " 

—  The  Passing  of  Arthur. 

11  But  how  to  take  last  leave  of  all  I  loved  ? 

0  golden  hair,  with  which  I  used  to  play 
Not  knowing  !     O  imperial  moulded  form, 
And  beauty  such  as  never  woman  wore, 
Until  it  came  a  kingdom's  curse  with  thee — 

1  cannot  touch  thy  lips  :  they  are  not  mine, 

But  Lancelot's  :  nay,  they  never  were  the  King's. 

I  cannot  take  thy  hand  ;  that  too  is  flesh, 

As  in  the  flesh  thou  hast  sinn'd  ;  and  mine  own  flesh, 

Here  looking  down  on  thine  polluted,  cries, 

'  I  loathe  thee.'"— Guinevere. 

"  Anything  fallen  again  ?  nay — what  was  there  left  to  fall  ? 
I  have  taken  them  home,  I  have  numbered  the  bones,  I  have 

hidden  them  all. 

What  am  I  saying  ?  and  what  are  you  ?  do  you  come  as  a  spy  ? 
Falls  ?  what  falls  ?  who  knows  ?    As  the  tree  falls  so  must  it  lie. 

"  Who  let  her  in  ?  how  long  has  she  been  ?  you — what  have  you 

heard  ? 

Why  did  you  sit  so  quiet  ?  you  never  have  spoken  a  word. 
Oh, — to  pray  with  me — yes — a  lady — none  of  their  spies — 
But  the  night  has  crept  into  my  heart,  and  begun  to  darken  my 

eyes." — Rizpah. 

10.  Microscopic  Observation— Peculiar  Attitude 
toward  Nature. — "  Not  less  remarkable  is  the  identity  of 


TENNYSON  795 

spirit  in  Tennyson  and  Milton  in  their  delicate  yet  wholesome 
sympathy  with  Nature,  their  perception  of  the  relation  of 
her  woods  and  aspects  to  the  human  heart.  .  .  .  They 
["  Idylls  "]  are  full  of  little  pictures  which  show  that  Tennyson 
has  studied  nature  at  first  hand  and  that  he  understands  how 
to  catch  and  reproduce  the  most  fleeting  and  delicate  expres- 
sions of  her  face.  .  .  .  Most  wonderful  of  all  is  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  sea  and  his  power  to  describe  it.  He  has  looked 
at  it  from  every  standpoint  and  caught  every  phase  of  its 
changing  aspect.  ...  He  has  caught  more  [than  Words- 
worth] of  the  throbbing  and  passionate  and  joyous  voices  of 
the  world  ;  he  has  not  entered  so  deeply  into  the  silence  and 
solemnity  of  guardian  mountains  and  sleeping  lakes  and  broad 
bare  skies  ;  but  he  has  felt  more  keenly  the  thrills  and  flushes 
of  Nature — the  strange,  sudden,  perplexed,  triumphant  im- 
pulses of  that  eager  seeking  and  tremulous  welcoming  of  love 
which  flows  like  life-blood  through  all  animate  things.  .  .  . 
While  the  Lady  of  Shalott  dwells  in  her  pure  seclusion,  the 
sun  shines,  the  lily  blossoms  on  the  river's  breast,  and  the  blue 
sky  is  unclouded  ;  but  when  she  passes  the  fatal  line,  and  the 
curse  has  fallen  on  her,  then 

'  In  the  stormy  east  wind  straining, 
The  pale  yellow  woods  are  waning, 
The  broad  stream  in  his  banks  complaining, 
Heavily  the  low  sky  raining. 
Over  tower'd  Camelot.' 

Mr.  Ruskin  says  that  this  is  '  pathetic  fallacy  ;  '  for,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  clouds  do  not  weep,  nor  do  the  rivers  com- 
plain, and  he  maintains  that  to  speak  of  them  as  if  they  did 
these  things  is  to  speak  with  a  certain  degree  of  falsehood  which 
is  unworthy  of  the  highest  kind  of  art.  But  Mr.  Ruskin  may 
say  what  he  pleases  about  Milton  and  Tennyson  without  much 
likelihood  of  persuading  any  sane  person  that  their  poetry  is 
not  profoundly  true  to  Nature — and  most  true  precisely  in  its 


796  TENNYSON 

recognition  of  her  power  to  echo  and  reflect  the  feelings  of 
man." — Henry  van  Dyke. 

"  In  describing  scenery,  his  microscopic  eye  and  marvel- 
lously delicate  ear  are  exercised  to  the  utmost  in  detecting  the 
minutest  relations  and  most  evanescent  melodies  of  the  objects 
before  him,  in  order  that  his  representation  shall  include  every- 
thing which  is  important  to  their  full  perception.  His  pict- 
ures of  English  rural  scenery  give  the  inner  spirit  as  well  as 
the  outward  form  of  the  objects,  and  represent  them,  also,  in 
their  relation  to  the  mind  which  is  gazing  on  them.  The  pict- 
ure in  his  mind  is  spread  out  before  his  detecting  and  dissect- 
ing intellect,  to  be  transformed  to  words  only  when  it  can  be 
done  with  the  most  refined  exactness,  both  as  regards  color 
and  form  and  melody." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  He  has  a  striking  microscopic  faculty,  on  which  his  poetic 
imagination  works.  No  poet  has  so  many  and  such  accurate 
references  to  the  vegetable  world,  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
references  so  thoroughly  poetic.  ...  He  never  tired  of 
reflecting  in  his  poetry  the  physiology  of  flowers  and  trees  and 
buds.  .  .  .  His  insight  into  them  does  not  come  through 
his  sympathy  with  active  life,  as  Shakespeare's  did  :  it  comes 
of  the  careful  scrutinizing  eye  of  the  naturalist  feeding  the 
brooding  heart  of  a  poet.  It  is  the  scenery  of  the  mill,  the 
garden,  the  chase,  the  down,  the  rich  pastures,  the  harvest 
fields,  the  palace  pleasure  grounds,  the  Lord  of  Burleigh's  fair 
domains.  .  .  .  There  is  always  complexity  in  the  beauty 
which  fascinates  Lord  Tennyson  most.  .  .  .  Note  espe- 
cially the  realism  (which  Tennyson  never  fails  to  show)  in 
explanation  of  especial  fragrance  in  the  air.  .  .  .  Lord 
Tennyson  has  wonderful  power  of  putting  nature  under  con- 
tribution to  help  him  in  delineating  moods  of  feeling.  .  .  . 
No  poet  has  ever  had  a  greater  mastery  than  Tennyson  over 
the  power  of  real  things." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

11  One  especially  rich  source,  both  for  imagery  and  idea,  is 
to  be  found  in  the  '  language  of  flowers  '  made  use  of  by  the 


TENNYSON 

poet.  Throughout  his  landscape  poems  the  rich  botany  of  the 
poet's  language  gives  a  vividness  to  the  poetry  much  needed 
in  the  realms  of  abstract  thought.  .  .  .  Notice,  too,  the 
accurate  observation  involved  in  '  crimson  fringes  '  of  daisy, 
'earlier  and  later  primrose.'  "—John  Sterling. 

"  In  '  Mariana'  the  poet  showed  an  art  then  peculiar,  but 
since  grown  familiar,  of  heightening  the  central  feeling  by 
landscape  accessories.  The  level  waste,  the  stagnant  sluices, 
the  neglected  garden,  the  wind  in  the  single  poplar,  re-en- 
force, by  their  monotonous  sympathy,  the  loneliness,  the 
hopeless  waiting  and  weariness  of  life  in  the  one  human  figure 
of  the  poem." — Henry  A.  Beers. 

"  A  series  of  physical  descriptions  constantly  makes  ns  sen- 
sible of  the  actual  world,  while  inwrought  with  this  the  feel- 
ing of  the  piece,  whether  love  or  sorrow  or  remorse,  is  kept 
vividly  before  us  in  all  its  abstract  significance." — H.  T. 
Tuckerman. 

"  Mr.  Tennyson,  while  fully  adopting  Wordsworth's  prin- 
ciple from  the  beginning,  seemed  by  instinctive  taste  to  have 
escaped  the  snares  which  proved  so  subtle  for  Keats  and  for 
Wordsworth.  .  .  .  Above  all,  .  .  .  there  was  a 
hushed  and  reverent  awe,  a  sense  of  the  mystery,  the  infini- 
tude, the  aw  fulness,  as  well  as  of  the  mere  beauty  of  wayside 
things,  which  invested  these  poems  as  a  whole  with  a  peculiar 
richness,  depth,  and  majesty  of  tone,  beside  which  both  Keats's 
and  Wordsworth's  methods  of  handling  pastoral  subjects  looked 
like  the  coloring  of  Giulio  Romano  beside  Titian.  .  .  . 
It  is  just  because  Mr.  Tennyson  is,  far  more  than  Wordsworth, 
mystical,  and  what  an  ignorant  and  money-getting  generation, 
idolatrous  of  mere  sensuous  activity,  calls  'dreamy,'  that  he 
has  become  the  greatest  naturalistic  poet  which  England  has 
seen  for  several  centuries." — Charles  Kings  ley. 


798  TENNYSON 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  With  blackest  moss  the  flower-pots 

Were  thickly  crusted,  one  and  all  : 
The  rusted  nails  fell  from  the  knots 

That  held  the  pear  to  the  gable- wall. 
The  broken  sheds  look'd  sad  and  strange  ; 

Unlifted  was  the  clinking  latch  ; 

Weeded  and  worn  the  ancient  thatch 
Upon  the  lonely  moated  grange. 

She  only  said,  '  My  life  is  dreary, 
He  cometh  not,'  she  said  ; 

She  said,  '  I  am  aweary,  aweary, 
I  would  that  I  were  dead  ! '  " — Mariana. 

11  Willows  whiten,  aspens  quiver, 
Little  breezes  dusk  and  shiver 
Thro'  the  wave  that  runs  forever 
By  the  island  in  the  river 

Flowing  down  to  Camelot. 
Four  gray  walls  and  four  gray  towers 
Overlook  a  space  of  flowers, 
And  the  silent  isle  embowers 

The  Lady  of  Shalott." 

—  The  Lady  of  Shalott. 

"  The  pale  blood  of  the  wizard  at  her  touch 
Took  gayer  colors,  like  an  opal  warm'd. 
She  blamed  herself  for  telling  hearsay  tales  : 
She  shook  from  fear,  and  for  her  fault  she  wept 
Of  petulancy  ;  she  called  him  lord  and  liege, 
Her  seer,  her  bard,  her  silver  star  of  eve, 
Her  God,  her  Merlin,  the  one  passionate  love 
Of  her  whole  life  ;  and  ever  overhead 
Bellow'd  the  tempest,  and  the  rotten  branch 
Snapt  in  the  rushing  of  the  river-rain 
Above  them  ;  and  in  the  change  of  glare  and  gloom 
Her  eyes  and  neck  glittering  went  and  came  ; 
Till  now  the  storm,  its  burst  of  passion  spent, 
Moaning  and  calling  out  of  other  lands, 


TENNYSON  799 

Had  left  the  ravaged  woodland  yet  once  more 

To  peace  ;  and  what  should  not  have  been  had  been  ; 

For  Merlin,  overtalked  and  overworn, 

Had  yielded,  told  her  all  the  charm,  and  slept." 

— Merlin  and  Vivian. 

II.  Repose — Peacefulness. — "  In  Tennyson  we  have 
the  strong  repose  of  art,  whereof — as  the  perfection  of  nature 
— the  world  is  slow  to  tire.  .  .  .  His  stream  is  sweet, 
assured,  strong ;  but  how  seldom  the  abrupt  bend,  the  plunge 
of  the  cataract,  the  thunder  of  the  spray !  .  .  .  The 
strain  of  '  In  Memoriam  '  is  ever  calm,  even  in  rehearsing  a 
by-gone  violence  of  emotion  along  its  passage  from  woe  to 
desolation  and  anon,  by  tranquil  stages,  to  reverence,  thought, 
aspiration,  endurance,  hope.  On  sea  and  shore  the  elements 
are  calm  ;  even  the  wild  winds  and  snows  of  winter  are 
brought  in  hand  and  made  subservient,  as  the  bells  ring  out 
the  dying  year,  to  the  new  birth  of  Nature  and  the  sure  pur- 
pose of  eternal  God." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  I  know  no  descriptive  poetry  that  has  the  delicate  spirit- 
ual genius  of  that  passage  [from  "  In  Memoriam  "],  its  sweet 
mystery,  its  subdued  lustre,  its  living  truth,  its  rapture  of 
peace." — X.  H.  Button . 

"  Some  passages  of  the  *  Lotos  Eaters  '  give  a  sensation  of 
luxurious  repose  far  more  conspicuously  than  the  '  Castle  of 
Indolence.'"— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"There  is  nothing  stirring,  nothing  restless,  nothing  am- 
bitious in  its  [Tennyson's  art]  tone ;  it  has  no  freaks  and 
eccentricities  by  which  it  seeks  to  strike  the  public  notice. 
.  But  the  very  nature  of  Tennyson's  genius  is  to  be 
contented  with  what  is.  It  is  happy  in  itself  as  the  bird  upon 
the  bough.  It  is  rolled  into  itself,  living  and  rejoicing  in  its 
own  being  and  blessedness." — W.  M.  Howitt. 

"  Disorder  of  thought,  of  feeling,  and  of  will  is,  with  Mr. 
Tennyson,  the  evil  of  evils,  the  pain  of  pains.  .  .  .  Let 
us  start  by  saying  that  Mr.  Tennyson  has  a  strong  dignity 


8OO  TENNYSON 

and  efficiency  of  law — of  law  understood  in  its  widest  mean- 
ing. Energy  nobly  controlled,  an  ordered  activity,  delight 
his  imagination.  Violence,  extravagance,  immoderate  force, 
the  swerving  from  appointed  ends,  revolt — these  are  with 
Mr.  Tennyson  the  supreme  manifestations  of  evil. 
Although  we  find  the  idea  of  God  entering  largely  into  his 
poems,  there  is  little  recognition  of  special  contact  of  the  soul 
with  the  Divine  Being  in  any  supernatural  way  of  quiet  or 
ecstasy.  There  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  disposition  to  rest 
in  the  orderly  manifestation  of  God  as  the  supreme  Law- 
Giver,  and  even  to  identify  him  with  his  presentation  of  him- 
self in  the  physical  and  moral  order  of  the  universe.  Mr. 
Tennyson  finds  law  present  throughout  all  nature,  but  there 
is  no  part  of  nature  in  which  he  dwells  with  so  much  satisfac- 
tion upon  its  presence  as  in  human  society.  .  .  .  His 
imagination  is  forever  haunted  by  '  the  vision  of  the  world 
and  all  the  wonder  that  would  be.'  But  the  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions of  Mr.  Tennyson  are  not  those  of  the  radical  or  move- 
ment character.  He  is  in  all  his  poems  conservative  as  well 
as  liberal.  .  .  .  Mr.  Tennyson's  political  doctrine  is  in 
entire  agreement  with  his  ideal  of  human  character.  As  the 
exemplar  of  all  nations  is  the  one  in  which  highest  wisdom  is 
united  with  complete  self-government,  so  the  ideal  man  is  he 
whose  life  is  led  to  sovereign  power  by  self-knowledge  result- 
ing in  self-control  and  self-control  growing  perfect  in  self- 
reverence.  ...  In  both  [the  poem  to  the  Prince  Consort 
and  that  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington]  the  characters  are  drawn 
with  fine  discrimination,  but  in  both  the  crowning  virtue  of 
the  dead  is  declared  to  have  been  the  virtue  of  obedience, 
that  of  self-subjugation  to  the  law  of  duty.  .  .  .  Self- 
reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control,  the  recognition  of  a 
divine  order  and  of  one's  place  in  that  order,  faithful  adhe- 
sion to  the  law  of  one's  highest  life — these  are  the  elements 
from  which  is  formed  the  human  character." — Edward 
Dow  den. 


TENNYSON  8oi 

"  Some  of  the  blank  verse  poems— a  style  almost  unat- 
tempted  in  the  earlier  series — have  a  quiet  completeness  and 
depth,  a  sweetness  arising  from  the  happy  balance  of  thought, 
feeling,  and  expression — that  ranks  them  among  the  riches  of 
our  recent  literature.  .  .  .  There  is  in  this  work  ["  Ulys- 
ses"] a  delightful  epic  tone  and  a  clear  unimpassioned  wis- 
dom, quietly  carving  its  sage  words  and  graceful  figures  on 
pale  but  lasting  marble.  .  .  .  The  unrhymed  verse  has 
a  quiet  fulness  of  sound  and  all  the  delineation  of  a  clear  yet 
rich  completeness  of  truth  that  render  the  little  work  ["  The 
Gardener's  Daughter"],  though  far  from  the  loftiest,  yet  one 
of  the  most  delightful  we  know." — John  Sterling. 

"  In  the  poetry  of  Tennyson,  to  use  an  image  furnished  by 
itself,  all  those  thunder-clouds  of  doubt,  fear,  and  ambition, 
which  had  long  been  roofing  the  European  world,  were  still 
visible,  only  they  floated  in  an  evening  atmosphere  and  had 
grown  golden  all  about  the  sky.  .  .  .  That  enveloping 
calm,  which  Tennyson  knows  so  well  how  to  combine  with 
power  of  expression." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  In  this  passage  [the  description  of  a  pathway  in  "  The 
Gardener's  Daughter  "]  we  have  a  not  inapt  illustration  of 
the  strongest  tendency  of  Tennyson's  mind.  It  is  from  such 
a  neat  and  quiet  bower  of  peace  that  he  looks  out  upon  the 
world. " —  W.  J.  Daw  son. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Calm  is  the  morn  without  a  sound, 
Calm  as  to  suit  a  greater  grief, 
And  only  thro'  the  faded  leaf, 

The  chestnut  pattering  to  the  ground. 

Calm  and  deep  peace  on  this  high  wold, 
And  on  these  dews  that  drench  the  furze, 
And  all  the  silvery  gossamers 

That  twinkle  into  green  and  gold. 


802  TENNYSON 

"  Calm  and  still  light  on  yon  great  plain 
That  sweeps  with  all  its  autumn  bowers, 
And  crowded  farms  and  lessening  towers, 
To  mingle  with  the  bounding  main  : 

"  Calm  and  deep  peace  in  this  wide  air, 
These  leaves  that  redden  to  the  fall ; 
And  in  my  heart,  if  calm  at  all, 
If  any  calm,  a  calm  despair." — In  Memoriam. 

"  Live — yet  live — 

Shall  sharpest  pathos  blight  us,  knowing  all 
Life  needs  for  life  is  possible  to  will — 
Live  happy  ;  tend  thy  flowers  ;  be  tended  by 
My  blessing  :  Should  my  Shadow  cross  thy  thoughts 
Too  sadly  for  thy  peace,  remand  it  thou 
For  calmer  hours  to  Memory's  darkest  hold, 
If  not  to  be  forgotten,  not  at  once — 
Not  all  forgotten.     Should  it  cross  thy  dreams, 
Oh  might  it  come  like  one  that  looks  content." 

— Love  and  Duty. 

"  One  walk'd  between  his  wife  and  child, 
With  measured  footfall  firm  and  mild, 
And  now  and  then  he  gravely  smiled. 

"  The  prudent  partner  of  his  blood 
Lean'd  on  him,  faithful,  gentle,  good, 
Wearing  the  rose  of  womanhood. 

"  And  in  their  double  love  secure, 
The  little  maiden  walked  demure, 
Pacing  with  downward  eyelids  pure. 

"  These  three  made  unity  so  sweet, 
My  frozen  heart  began  to  beat, 
Remembering  its  ancient  heat. 

"  I  blest  them,  and  they  wander'd  on  : 
I  spoke,  but  answer  came  there  none  : 
The  dull  and  bitter  voice  was  gone. 


TENNYSON  803 

A  second  voice  was  at  mine  ear, 

A  little  whisper  silver-clear, 

A  murmur,  '  Be  of  better  cheer.' 

"  As  from  some  blissful  neighborhood, 
A  notice  faintly  understood, 
'  I  see  the  end,  and  know  the  good.' " 

—  The  Two  Voices. 

12.  Tenderness — Pathos.—"  The  tenderness  of  Ten- 
nyson is  one  of  his  remarkable  qualities — not  so  much  in  it- 
self, for  other  poets  have  been  more  tender — but  in  combina- 
tion with  his  rough  powers.  We  are  not  surprised  that  his 
rugged  strength  is  capable  of  the  mighty  and  tragic  tenderness 
of  'Rizpah,'  but  we  could  not  think  at  first  that  he  could  feel 
and  realize  the  exquisite  tenderness  of  '  Elaine.'  ...  It 
is  a  wonderful  thing  to  have  so  wide  a  tenderness,  and  only  a 
great  poet  can  possess  it  and  use  it  well." — Stopford  Brooke . 

"Take  the  stanzas  entitled  'A  Farewell,'  the  pathos  of 
which,  if  it  be  difficult  to  account  for,  it  is  not  the  less  im- 
possible to  resist.  A  simple  touch  this — a  mere  ejaculation  of 
tender  emotion,  which  seems  as  if  it  might  have  escaped  from 
anybody,  yet  it  shows  how  truly  the  poet's  feeling  vibrates 
in  sympathy  with  nature  ;  otherwise  how  should  so  simple  a 
tone  out  of  the  heart  awaken  such  an  echo  in  our  own?" 
— /.  R.  Spedding. 

"Tennyson  is  a  great  master  of  pathos;  knows  the  very 
tones  that  go  to  the  heart ;  can  arrest  every  one  of  those  looks 
of  upbraiding  or  appeal  by  which  human  woe  brings  the  tear 
into  the  human  eye.  .  .  .  The  pathos  is  deep ;  but  it  is 
the  majesty,  not  the  prostration  of  grief." — Peter  Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Most  noble  lord,  Sir  Lancelot  of  the  Lake, 
I,  sometime  call'd  the  maid  of  Astolat, 
Come,  for  you  left  me,  taking  no  farewell, 
Hither,  to  take  my  last  farewell  of  you. 


804  TENNYSON 

I  loved  you,  and  my  love  had  no  return, 

And  therefore  my  true  love  has  been  my  death. 

And  therefore  to  my  Lady  Guinevere, 

And  to  all  other  ladies,  I  make  moan. 

Pray  for  my  soul,  and  yield  me  burial. 

Pray  for  my  soul,  thou  too,  Sir  Lancelot, 

For  thou  art  a  knight  peerless." 

— Lancelot  and  Elaine. 

"  Too  hard  to  bear  !  why  did  they  take  me  thence  ? 
O  God  Almighty,  blessed  Saviour,  Thou 
That  didst  uphold  me  on  my  lonely  isle, 
Uphold  me,  Father,  in  my  loneliness 
A  little  longer  !  aid  me,  give  me  strength 
Not  to  tell  her,  never  to  let  her  know. 
Help  me  not  to  break  in  upon  her  peace. 
My  children  too  !  must  I  not  speak  to  these  ? 
They  know  me  not.     I  should  betray  myself. 
Never  :  No  father's  kiss  for  me — the  girl, 
So  like  her  mother,  and  the  boy,  my  son." 

— Enoch  Arden. 

"  '  But  now,  Sir,  let  me  have  my  boy,  for  you 
Will  make  him  hard,  and  he  will  learn  to  slight 
His  father's  memory  ;  and  take  Dora  back, 
And  let  all  this  be  as  it  was  before.' 
So  Mary  said,  and  Dora  hid  her  face 
By  Mary.     There  was  silence  in  the  room  ; 
And  all  at  once  the  old  man  burst  in  sobs  : — 
'  I  have  been  to  blame — to  blame. 
I  have  killed  my  son. 

I  have  kill'd  him — but  I  loved  him — my  dear  son. 
May  God  forgive  me  ! — I  have  been  to  blame. 
Kiss  me,  my  children.' 

Then  they  clung  about 

The  old  man's  neck,  and  kiss'd  him  many  times. 
And  all  the  man  was  broken  with  remorse  ; 
And  all  his  love  came  back  a  hundredfold  ; 
And  for  three  hours  he  sobb'd  o'er  William's  child." 

— Dora. 


HOLMES,  1809-1894 

Biographical  Outline. — Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  born 
August  29,  1809,  in  Cambridge,  Mass. ;  father  a  graduate 
of  Yale  College,  a  writer  of  some  local  reputation,  a  rigid 
Calvinist,  and  during  most  of  his  life  pastor  of  the  First  Con- 
gregational Church  of  Cambridge ;  his  mother,  whom  the 
poet  more  resembled,  was  descended  from  an  old  Dutch 
family  of  Albany,  N.  Y.,  by  the  name  of  Wendell;  Holmes 
begins  his  education  at  a  dame's  school ;  at  fifteen  he  is  in 
school  at  Cambridgeport,  and  goes  thence,  in  1824,  to  Phillips 
Academy,  at  Andover ;  the  boy  early  manifests  a  reaction 
against  the  narrow  tenets  of  Calvinism,  and  is  greatly  influ- 
enced by  the  atmosphere  of  Unitarianism  that  pervaded  Cam- 
bridge during  his  youth;  Holmes  was  not  precocious  as  a 
verse-maker  ;  the  reading  that  most  influenced  his  poetic  taste 
in  early  days  was  Gray's  "Elegy"  and  Pope's  "Homer;" 
in  the  summer  of  1825  he  enters  Harvard  College,  thus 
becoming  a  member  of  the  famous  class  of  1829;  while  in 
college  Holmes  writes  to  his  Andover  chum  and  life-long 
friend,  Phineas  Barnes,  "  I  smoke  most  devoutly  and  sing  most 
unmusically ;  have  written  poetry  for  the  Annual,  and  have 
seen  my  literary  bantlings  smothered  in  green  silk  and  repos- 
ing in  the  drawing-room  :  "  after  graduating  from  Harvard, 
in  1829,  he  enters  the  Harvard  Law  School  at  Cambridge, 
and  devotes  himself  to  law  for  one  year,  but  finds  it,  as  he 
says,  "very  cold  and  cheerless  about  the  threshold;"  in 
1830  he  writes  to  Barnes,  "I  have  been  writing  poetry  like 
a  madman  ;  "  the  reference  is  to  his  contributions  to  the 
Collegian,  a  paper  then  published  by  the  undergraduates  of 
Harvard;  these  contributions  include  "The  Spectre  Pig," 

805 


806  HOLMES 

"The  Mysterious  Visitor,"  and  many  other  verses  which 
Holmes  refused  afterward  to  republish  ;  during  his  year  in  the 
law  school  he  also  writes  his  since  widely  known  poem  "  Old 
Ironsides;"  the  old  frigate  Constitution,  then  lying  in  the 
Navy  Yard  in  Charlestown,  had  been  condemned  by  the  Navy 
Department  to  be  destroyed  ;  on  reading  of  the  proposed 
action,  Holmes  seized  a  scrap  of  paper,  wrote  rapidly  with  a 
pencil  his  poetical  protest,  and  sent  it  to  the  Daily  Advertiser ; 
the  poem  was  reprinted  all  through  the  United  States,  and 
was  scattered  about  Washington  as  a  handbill,  with  the  result 
that  the  old  war-ship  was  not  destroyed ;  in  the  autumn  of 
1830  he  gives  up  the  law  and  enters  a  private  medical  school 
in  Boston  ;  in  1831  he  writes  :  "I  have  been  a  medical  stu- 
dent for  more  than  six  months ;  I  know  I  might  have  made 
an  indifferent  lawyer — I  think  I  may  make  a  tolerable  physi- 
cian— I  did  not  like  the  one  and  I  do  like  the  other ;  "  soon 
after  their  graduation  the  Class  of  '29  began  to  have  annual 
dinners  in  Boston,  and  Holmes  accordingly  began  his  long 
series  of  occasional  poems  in  honor  of  these  events ;  after  two 
courses  of  medical  lectures  in  Boston  he  sails  for  Paris  late  in 
March,  1833,  to  spend  two  years  there  in  completing  his 
medical  education  ;  among  his  travelling  companions  during 
the  long  voyage  were  George  William  Curtis  and  "Tom" 
Appleton. 

Holmes's  sojourn  in  Paris  was  made  possible  through  funds 
inherited  by  his  mother  and  through  the  rigid  economy  of 
both  his  parents;  after  visiting  Salisbury,  Stonehenge,  and 
Havre,  he  reaches  Paris,  and  settles  there  at  55  Rue  M.  le 
Prince;  while  in  Paris  he  works  industriously  from  7.30  A.M. 
till  5  P.M.,  and  then  dines  at  a  cafe  with  a  jolly  group  of  fel- 
low-students— all  Bostonians  ;  of  this  Parisian  experience  he 
wrote  later,  "I  saw  but  little  outside  hospital  and  lecture- 
rooms;"  in  the  early  summer  of  1834,  after  the  medical 
lectures  were  over,  Holmes,  with  several  companions,  makes 
a  tour  through  the  Low  Countries  and  back  to  Paris  through 


HOLMES  SO/ 

England  and  Scotland,  visiting  the  Burns  and  Scott  districts 
and  the  Lake  country;  after  studying  severely  during  the 
winter  of  1834-35,  meantime  subject  to  immediate  recall 
because  of  the  war  between  France  and  America  and  the 
strained  financial  condition  of  his  parents,  he  ships  to  Boston 
"two  skeletons  and  some  skulls,"  and  starts,  in  July,  1834, 
on  a  long  hoped-for  tour  through  Switzerland  and  Italy, 
tramping  from  Geneva  to  Milan,  visiting  Venice,  Bologna, 
and  Rome;  he  returns  to  America  in  the  following  autumn, 
reaching  New  York  December  14,  1835,  after  a  voyage  of 
forty-three  days;  he  had  gained  much  medical  knowledge 
and  an  excellent  command  oif  the  French  tongue ;  while  in 
Paris  he  wrote  no  poems ;  his  expenses  there  were  about 
$1,200  a  year,  including  books,  instruments,  and  private  in- 
struction;  he  declared  in  after-life,  "I  never  risked  a  franc 
on  any  game  in  Europe,"  and  his  biographer  and  cousin 
maintains  that  the  young  physician  "  brought  back  no  skeleton 
except  those  in  his  trunks;"  in  October,  1834,  when  asked 
to  contribute  to  the  New  England  Magazine,  he  writes:  "  I 
shall  say  No,  though  Nemesis  and  Plutus  come  hand  in  hand 
to  tear  me,  the  Cincinnatus  of  science,  from  the  plough-tail 
she  has  summoned  me  to  follow." 

Holmes  establishes  himself  in  an  office  in  Boston  early  in 
1836,  after  receiving  the  degree  of  M.D.  from  Harvard,  and 
intimates  to  the  public  that  "  small  favors  (or  fevers)  will  be 
thankfully  received,"  but  his  practice  at  first  was  very  small, 
and  never  became  more  than  fair ;  his  reputation  as  a  wit  and 
a  poet  was  doubtless  a  hindrance  to  his  professional  success ; 
late  in  1836  he  publishes  his  first  volume  of  poems,  including 
"  Old  Ironsides,"  "  The  Last  Leaf,"  and  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
poem  that  he  had  read  at  Harvard  during  the  previous  sum- 
mer ;  he  occupies  his  leisure  by  acting  for  three  seasons  as 
one  of  the  physicians  of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital ; 
in  1838  he  is  "mightily  pleased"  on  receiving  an  appoint- 
ment as  Professor  of  Anatomy  at  Dartmouth  College — a  posi- 


80S  HOLMES 

tion  that  required  his  residence  at  Hanover  only  during  the 
months  of  August,  September,  and  October;  he  holds  this 
professorship  for  the  years  1839  and  1840;  meantime  he 
competes  successfully  for  the  Boylston  medical  prize,  his  dis- 
sertation in  the  competition  receiving  almost  unanimously  the 
highest  marks  by  the  judges,  although  his  competitors  were 
physicians  of  large  experience  from  various  States  of  the 
Union ;  he  also  won  two  other  medical  prizes  about  this 
time;  these  prize  dissertations  were  the  result  of  enormous 
labor  and  most  extensive  investigation  by  Dr.  Holmes,  and 
the  one  on  "Intermittent  Fever  in  New  England"  is  still 
authoritative  for  the  period  which  it  covers ;  later  these  and 
other  dissertations  were  gathered  into  a  volume  published 
under  the  title  "  Medical  Essays  " — a  book  that  contains  some 
of  Holmes's  brightest  wit,  especially  in  his  satirical  essays 
on  homreopathy;  his  essay  on  "Contagiousness  of  Puerperal 
Fever,"  published  in  1843,  established  his  reputation  as  that 
of  a  physician  who  had  made  an  original  and  very  valuable 
contribution  to  medical  science;  at  first  his  theory  was  bit- 
terly opposed  by  the  most  eminent  professors  of  obstetrics, 
and  Holmes  was  subjected  to  violent  personal  abuse,  but  his 
logic  triumphed,  and  his  theory  is  now  generally  accepted  by 
medical  scholars;  the  essay  was  republished  in  1855. 

On  June  15,  1840,  he  was  married  to  Amelia  Lee  Jackson, 
daughter  of  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts 
and  a  niece  of  Holmes's  friend  and  former  preceptor  ;  of  the 
three  children  of  this  marriage  one  became  a  Lieutenant 
Colonel  in  the  Civil  War  and  afterward  a  Judge  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts ;  the  other  two  died  in  com- 
paratively early  life,  several  years  before  their  father;  in  1847 
Holmes  is  made  Parkman  Professor  of  Anatomy  and  Physi- 
ology in  the  Medical  School  of  Harvard  College — a  position 
that  he  held  till  1871,  when  a  separate  Professorship  of  Physi- 
ology was  established,  he  still  retaining  the  work  in  Anatomy  ; 
during  these  twenty- four  years  he  taught  also  microscopy  and 


HOLMES  809 

psychology,  so  that  he  said  he  occupied  "  not  a  professor's 
chair  but  a  whole  settee." 

Holmes  was  most  successful  in  his  professorship  at  Harvard, 
and  took  great  pride  in  his  work,  though  the  salary  was  not 
large;  his  lecture  was  always  placed  latest  in  the  afternoon, 
because  he  alone  could  hold  the  interest  of  the  wearied  stu- 
dents ;  he  was  one  of  the  first  American  physicians  to  use  the 
microscope,  and  invented  the  hand  stereoscope,  now  so  com- 
mon, although  he  never  patented  it ;  he  also  made  a  rare  col- 
lection of  old  medical  books,  which  he  loved  as  Lamb  loved 
his  old  dramatists ;  he  was  Dean  of  the  Medical  School  from 
1847  to  1853,  and  continued  his  professorship  of  Anatomy 
till  1882  ;  soon  after  his  marriage  he  began  to  follow  the  then 
very  co.mmon  practice  of  lecturing  in  various  towns  and  vil- 
lages of  New  England,  and  became  very  popular  in  this  field  ; 
his  uniform  terms  were  "  fifteen  dollars  and  expenses;"  it  was 
work  that  he  disliked,  but  it  was  welcome  as  a  means  of  eking 
out  his  then  scanty  income  ;  among  others,  he  gave  twelve 
lectures  in  1852  before  the  Lowell  Institute  on  the  English 
poets,  and  closed  each  lecture  with  verses  of  his  own  ;  during 
his  country  lecture-tours  he  became  subject  to  asthma,  a 
malady  that  seriously  interfered  with  his  work  and  his  plans 
for  travel  during  the  rest  of  his  life ;  he  dared  not  trust  him- 
self away  from  home  for  fear  of  being  quite  overcome  by 
asthma ;  his  first  residence  after  marriage  was  at  8  Mont- 
gomery Place,  afterward  Bosworth  Street ;  thence  he  removed 
in  1858  to  Charles  Street,  near  the  Cambridge  bridge,  where 
he  remained  till  1870,  when  he  removed  to  the  home  in 
Beacon  Street  where  he  finished  his  days;  from  1849  to  1856 
he  passed  his  summers  at  Pittsfield  on  a  farm  of  two  hundred 
and  eighty  acres  on  the  Lenox  road,  an  estate  inherited  from 
his  maternal  greatgrandfather  and  known  in  history  as  "  Canoe 
Meadows. ' ' 

When  the  Atlantic  Monthly  was  established,  in  1857, 
Lowell  accepted  the  editorship  only  on  the  condition  that 


8 10  HOLMES 

Holmes  should  be  "  the  first  contributor  engaged  ;  "  Holmes 
was  then  fifty  years  of  age,  and  had  little  more  than  a  local 
reputation  as  a  writer;  but,  as  he  said  afterward,  "Lowell 
woke  me  from  a  kind  of  literary  lethargy  in  which  I  was  half 
slumbering,  to  call  me  to  active  service;"  Holmes  named 
the  new  periodical,  and  his  cheery  contributions  over  the 
'pseudonym  of  the  "  Autocrat"  really  saved  the  undertaking 
from  financial  ruin  during  the  terrible  financial  panic  of  1857; 
he  had  first  used  the  pseudonym  in  the  New  England  Maga- 
zine, twenty-five  years  before;  on  entering  again  the  literary 
field,  Holmes  specifically  declined  to  become  either  a  critic  or 
a  reviewer,  declaring  that  "  when  Nature  manufactured  her 
authors  she  made  the  critics  out  of  the  chips  that  were  left ;  " 
he  longs  to  travel,  and  envies  the  European  experiences  of 
his  friends  Lowell  and  Motley,  but  his  asthma  keeps  him,  as 
he  says,  "  a  kind  of  prisoner  for  life  in  Boston  ;  "  Fields,  his 
publisher,  was  for  many  years  Holmes's  next-door  neighbor  ; 
his  best  and  latest  poems  were  first  published  in  connection 
with  the  "Autocrat"  series,  being  scattered  through  the 
prose  articles;  "The  Chambered  Nautilus"  appeared  in  the 
fourth  of  the  "  Breakfast-Table  "  series,  and  was  at  once  pro- 
nounced by  Whittier  to  be  "  booked  for  immortality  ;  "  dur- 
ing his  later  years  Holmes  often  read  his  poems  in  public 
with  great  success,  generally  in  behalf  of  philanthropic  enter- 
prises ;  soon  after  the  establishment  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
he  took  a  prominent  part  in  forming  the  famous  Saturday 
Club,  which  for  many  years  dined  at  "  Parker's  "  on  the  last 
Saturday  of  each  month,  and  included,  besides  Holmes, 
Emerson,  Motley,  Hawthorne,  Whittier,  Lowell,  Longfellow, 
Whipple,  Prescott,  Felton,  Howells,  Norton,  Agassiz,  Park- 
man,  Sumner,  and  several  other  prominent  contributors  to 
the  Atlantic  ;  next  to  his  own  family,  Holmes  loved  the  club 
— an  attitude  due  in  part,  doubtless,  to  his  forced  provincial- 
ism; in  December,  1858,  he  visited  Irving  at  "Sunnyside." 
After  contributing  "The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table" 


HOLMES  8ll 

to  the  Atlantic,  in  twelve  monthly  instalments,  during  1858, 
he  followed  it  the  next  year  with  the  series  of  equal  length 
entitled  "The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast-Table;"  fourteen 
years  then  passed  before  he  completed  the  series  with  "  The 
Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table,"  in  1873  ;  meantime  he  had 
written  "Elsie  Venner,"  first  published  in  1859  under  the 
title  of  "The  Parson's  Love  Story  ;  "  although  this  was  se- 
verely criticised  as  "a  medicated  novel,"  etc.,  etc.,  Holmes 
declared  that  it  was  really  conceived  "  in  the  fear  of  God  and 
in  the  love  of  man  ;  "  the  story  really  treats  not  so  much  of 
a  question  of  physiology  as  of  the  profoundest  problem  in 
theology;  of  his  two  other  stories,  "The  Guardian  Angel  " 
appeared  in  1867,  and  "A  Mortal  Antipathy"  in  1885. 

During  the  war  period  Holmes  held  himself  aloof  from  all 
anti-slavery  and  other  political  organizations,  and  distrusted 
the  abolition  movement ;  he  had  an  utter  distaste  for  meet- 
ings and  committee  work  ;  although  he  wrote  several  vigor- 
ous war  poems,  his  only  public  activity  during  this  period  was 
in  the  form  of  an  oration  delivered  in  Boston  July  4,  1863  ; 
this  oration  was  very  widely  applauded,  and  was  afterward 
published  in  the  volume  entitled  "  Pages  from  an  Old 
Volume  of  Life;  "  early  in  1864  Holmes  was  one  of  the 
illustrious  company  that  followed  Hawthorne's  body  to  the 
grave ;  during  his  later  years  he  was  continually  appealed  to 
for  literary  advice,  and  was  often,  as  he  said,  "struggling  in  a 
quagmire  of  unanswered  letters  and  unthanked-for  books;  " 
on  December  3,  1879,  he  was  honored  with  a  breakfast  by  the 
publishers  of  the  Atlantic  as  that  contributor  who,  more  than 
any  other,  had  caused  the  prosperity  of  the  magazine;  at  this 
function  all  the  prominent  living  writers  of  America  were 
either  present  in  person  or  sent  laudatory  letters  ;  on  Novem- 
ber 28,  1882,  he  resigned  his  professorship  in  the  Harvard 
Medical  School,  after  having  lectured  there  thirty-five  years, 
and  was  made  Professor  Emeritus ;  at  the  same  time  he  en- 
tered into  a  contract  with  his  publishers  for  regular  literary 


8l2  HOLMES 

work;  on  April  12,  1883,  the  medical  profession  of  the  city 
of  New  York  gave  a  dinner  in  honor  of  Holmes,  at  which 
William  M.  Evarts,  George  William  Curtis,  and  Whitelaw 
Reid  took  a  prominent  part ;  after  the  death  of  Motley,  one 
of  Holmes's  dearest  personal  friends,  in  May,  1877,  he  wrote 
a  brief  memoir  for  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society, 
which  he  afterward  expanded  into  a  small  volume — a  tribute 
rather  than  a  biography — published  in  1878;  Holmes  also 
wrote  a  "Life"  of  Emerson  for  the  "American  Men  of 
Letters"  series,  published  in  1884,  but  this,  although  the 
result  of  profound  study  of  and  about  Emerson,  was  also  a 
tribute  or  a  memoir  rather  than  a  biography. 

On  April  29,  1886,  Holmes  started  for  Europe  in  company 
with  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Sargent ;  they  landed  at  Liverpool 
May  Qth,  after  a  voyage  in  which  the  Doctor  suffered  severe- 
ly from  his  old  enemy,  the  asthma;  they  were  received  with 
marked  social  attention  at  Liverpool,  and  went  thence  to 
London,  stopping  at  Chester;  from  the  beginning  it  was  a 
triumphal  tour,  as  special  railway  carriages,  flowers,  and  all 
sorts  of  attentions  were  awaiting  them  everywhere;  they 
established  themselves  at  17  Dover  Street,  in  London,  and 
were  so  flooded  with  social  invitations  that  they  were  required 
to  keep  a  secretary  to  acknowledge  them  ;  as  Holmes  writes, 
"Breakfasts,  luncheons,  dinners,  teas,  receptions  with  spread 
tables,  two,  three,  four  deep  of  an  evening,  with  receiving 
company  at  our  own  rooms,  took  up  the  day ;  ' '  they  met 
Browning,  Layard,  Gladstone,  James  Bryce,  Tyndall,  and 
scores  of  other  eminent  Englishmen,  and  received  especial 
attention  from  Lady  Harcourt,  Lady  Rosebery,  and  Sir 
Henry  Irving,  and  Holmes  saw  the  Derby  of  1886  ;  on  the 
3d  of  June  they  held  a  great  reception  and  met  three  hun- 
dred guests;  on  the  7th  Holmes  heard  Gladstone  deliver 
his  famous  speech  on  the  Irish  question ;  Lowell  gave  him  a 
dinner,  at  which  were  Leslie  Stephen,  DuMaurier,  Andrew 
Lang,  Alma  Tadema,  and  many  other  artists  and  literary 


HOLMES  813 

men  ;  then  they  spent  two  days  on  the  Isle  of  Wight,  by 
special  invitation,  as  the  guests  of  Tennyson  ;  Holmes  made 
his  first  visit  to  Cambridge  in  company  with  Edmund  Gosse 
on  June  i3th;  on  the  i6th  he  went  again,  and  on  the  lyth 
received  from  the  University  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters; 
after  receiving  marked  social  attentions  at  Cambridge  the 
Holmes' s  went  to  Oxford,  where  the  program  was  repeated ; 
thence  by  way  of  York  to  Edinburgh,  and  there  Holmes 
received  LL.D. ;  from  Edinburgh  to  Stirling  and  through  the 
Highlands  to  Glasgow  and  thence  back  to  Oxford,  where 
they  were  the  guests  of  Vice-Chancellor  Jowett,  and  where 
Browning,  Lowell,  and  John  Bright  were  assembled  to  meet 
Holmes;  from  Oxford  he  received  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  ; 
after  leaving  Oxford  the  party  spent  a  week  at  Stratford,  and 
then  went  for  rest  to  Great  Malvern;  thence  to  Bath,  thence 
to  Salisbury  for  a  week's  sojourn,  and  thence  back  to  London, 
stopping  a  week  at  Brighton  ;  after  staying  in  London  from 
July  2 pth  to  August  5th  and  availing  themselves  of  the  absence 
of  "  society  "  to  see  many  odd  nooks  about  the  old  city,  they 
crossed  to  Paris  and  spent  a  week  there  incognito,  calling 
on  no  one  but  the  American  Minister  and  M.  Pasteur ;  then 
another  week  in  London,  a  reception  in  Liverpool,  and  back 
to  Boston  August  29,  1886. 

In  March,  1888,  Holmes  began,  in  the  Atlantic,  his  last 
prose  series,  entitled  "Over  the  Tea-Cups,"  saying:  "Al- 
though I  have  cleared  the  eight- bar  red  gate,  my  friends 
encourage  me  with  the  assurance  that  I  am  not  yet  in  my 
second  childhood;"  in  this  series  of  articles  the  most 
remarkable  feature  was  the  poem  entitled  "The  Broomstick 
Train  " — a  marvellous  production  for  a  man  eighty  years  of 
age  ;  his  son  Edward,  a  young  man  of  feeble  health  but  fine 
promise,  had  died  in  1884,  and  while  Holmes  was  writing 
the  "Tea-Cup"  series  he  lost  both  his  wife  and  daughter; 
during  the  last  years  of  the  poet  his  oldest  son,  Mr.  Justice 
Holmes,  returned  to  the  homestead  on  Beacon  Street,  and 


8 14  HOLMES 

cared  for  his  father  most  tenderly;  about  1886  a  cataract 
began  to  form  over  one  of  Holmes's  eyes,  dimming  but  not 
destroying  his  sight;  he  called  it  "a  ^/-aract  in  the  kitten 
stage  of  development ;  "  this  affliction  compelled  him  to  do 
most  of  his  writing  through  an  amanuensis;  during  the  last 
half  of  his  life  his  summers  were  spent  in  a  simple  cottage 
that  he  owned  at  Beverly  Farms  on  the  north  shore  of  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  where  countless  attentions  were  showered  upon 
him  by  near  and  distant  friends  and  admirers ;  he  was  able  to 
walk  about  till  his  very  last  day,  and  died  in  his  chair  at  his 
Boston  home  October  7,  1894. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  CRITICISM  ON  HOLMES. 
Whittier,   J.  G.,  "  Literary  Recreations."     Boston,  1872,  Osgood,  128- 

137. 
Stedman,  E.  C.,  "  Poets  of  Amerjca."    Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  273-304. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "American  Literature."  Boston,  1887,  Ticknor,  76,  77. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."  Boston,  1861,  Ticknor,  i: 

66-68. 

Taylor,  B.,  "Essays  and  Notes."  New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  301,  302. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."  New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

2:   204-219. 

Kennedy,  W.  S.,  "  O.  W.  Holmes."     Boston,  1883,  Cassino  &  Co. 
Nichol,  J.,  "American  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1882,  Black,  357-363 

and  407-41 1. 
Haweis,   H.   R.,    "American    Humorists."     London,    1883,    Chatto  & 

Windus,  37-73. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "  Poetical  Works."     Boston,  1882,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  3  :  84,  85. 

Walsh,  W.  S.,  "  Pen  Pictures."     New  York,  1886,  Putnam,  144-150. 
Whittier,  J.  G.,  "Poetical  Works."     Boston,   1888,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  4:    142,  143. 
Griswold,   R.   W.,  "Poets  of  America."     Philadelphia,   1846,  Carey  & 

Hart,  341-347- 
Mitford,  Miss  M.  R.,  "  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."     New  York, 

1851,  399-410. 
Harper's  Magazine,  83  :  277-385  (G.  W.  Curtis);  94:  120-154  (W.   D. 

Howells). 


HOLMES  8l5 

Atlantic  Monthly,  27-.  653  (Howells) ;  46:704,  705  (G.  P.   Lathrop) ; 

70:  401,  402  (Whittier);   74:  831  (H.  E.  Scudder). 
Scribner's  Magazine,   18:117-127  (F.    H.   Underwood);    16:791-792 

(Editor). 

The  Forum,  18  :  271-287  (J.  W.  Chadwick). 

Literary  World,  25  :  350  (Editor) ;  17  :  23  (Editor)  ;  16  :  429  (Editor). 
Review  of  Reviews,  10:  495-501  (E.  E.  Hale). 
Critic,  22  :  242-257  and  259,  and  3:  191,  192  (J.  T.  Morse);   8  :  46  (H. 

R.  Haweis);  6:  I  and    13   (A.   W.    Rollins);  4:  109  and    133  and 

5  =  97  I  25  :  382-  (E.  Gosse). 
The  Dial  (Chicago),  17  :  215-217  and  12:  209-219  (E.  G.  Johnson). 
North  American  Review,  64:  208-216  (J.    Bowen) ;  68:   201-203    (F- 

Bowen);  159:  669-677  (H.  C.  Lodge)  ;  44  :  275  (Palfrey). 
International  Review,  8:  501-514  (R.  O.  Palmer). 
Arena,  II  :  41-54  (M.  J.  Savage-). 
Good  Words,  28:  298-305  (F.  H.  Underwood). 
Spectator,  61 :  855-858  (F.  T.  Palgrave). 

Athfnasum,  1884  (2),  274  (E.  W.  Gosse) ;    1888  (i),  787,  788. 
New  England  Magazine,  n.  s.,  I  :  115  (G.  W.  Cooke). 
Nation,  59  :  264,  265  (G.  E.  Woodberry). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I .  Buoyancy — Youthfulness— Optimism. 

"  The  gift  is  thine  the  weary  world  to  make 
More  cheerful  for  thy  sake, 

Lighting  the  sullen  face  of  discontent 

With  smiles  for  blessings  sent." — Whittier. 

"It  is  Holmes's  special  peculiarity  that  the  childish  buoy- 
ancy remains  almost  to  the  end,  unbroken  and  irrepressible." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

"The  thing  we  first  note  is  his  elastic,  buoyant  nature, 
displayed  from  youth  to  age  with  cheery  frankness.  .  .  . 
Before  his  day  the  sons  of  the  Puritans  were  hardly  ripe  for 
the  doctrine  that  there  is  a  time  to  laugh,  that  humor  is  quite 
as  helpful  a  constituent  of  life  as  gravity  or  gloom." — E.  C. 
Stedman. 


8l6  HOLMES 

"  I  hold  him  as  having  an  inalienable  right  to  all  the  fresh- 
ness and  sincerity  and  vivacity  of  youth,  with  gravity  strug- 
gling hard  to  keep  dominion  over  his  countenance  and  laugh- 
ter escaping  for  shelter  to  his  eyes." — George  Bancroft. 

"  I  knew  Dr.  Holmes  more  than  sixty  years  ago.  He  was 
a  very  small  boy  then — he  is  still  [1879]  hardly  less  of  a  boy, 
thank  Heaven  !  "  —  W.  H.  Furness. 

"  The  first  thing  which  strikes  a  reader  of  Holmes  is  the 
vigor  and  elasticity  of  his  nature.  .  .  .  One  thing  ap- 
pears certain,  that  he  never  can  grow  old.  .  .  .  It  is  im- 
possible to  read  his  later  poems  without  being  impressed  by 
that  spirit  of  youthfulness  with  which  they  are  animated." 
—£.  P.  Whipple. 

1  'We  find  in  Dr.  Holmes  a  cheerful  and  a  hopeful  spirit. 
His  mission  has  been  to  cherish  hope  in  men  and  to 
plant  courage  in  their  hearts.  ...  He  will  always  be  a 
boy,  even  if  his  fourscore  years  should  grow  into  a  century. 
The  spirit  of  the  boy  is  in  him,  and  will  not  out  at  any  bid- 
ding whatsoever." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  [The  Poem  on  Contentment]  is  a  most  fair  confession  of 
his  liking  for  life's  fair  and  pleasant  things.  .  .  .  He  was 
neither  stoic  nor  ascetic ;  neither  indifferent  to  life's  sweet 
and  pleasant  things  nor,  while  hankering  for  their  possession, 
did  he  repress  his  noble  rage  and  freeze  the  genial  currents  of 
his  soul.  His  was  an  undisguised  enjoyment  of  earthly  com- 
forts ;  a  happy  confidence  in  the  excellence  and  glory  of  our 
present  life;  a  persuasion,  as  one  has  said,  « that  if  God  made 
us,  then  he  also  meant  us ;  '  and  he  held  to  these  things  so 
earnestly,  so  pleasantly,  so  cheerfully,  that  he  could  not  help 
communicating  them  to  everything  he  wrote.  .  .  .  He 
wrote  in  such  a  jocund  way,  with  such  animal  spirits  and 
pure  absurdity." — -John  Chadwick. 

"  He  secured  from  the  gods,  who  gave  him  immortality, 
also  eternal  youth." — H.  H.  Boyesen. 

"  With  the  kindliness  and  humanity  of  the  Doctor's  tern- 


HOLMES  817 

perament  there  were  linked  the  kindred  virtues  of  uncon- 
querable cheerfulness  and  buoyancy,  with  the  courage  which 
is  the  natural  comrade  of  these  traits.  His  philosophy  was 
ot  defiant  but  serene."— -J.  T.  Morse. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Has  there  any  old  fellow  got  mixed  with  the  boys  ? 
If  there  has,  take  him  out,  without  making  a  noise. 
Hang  the  Almanac's  cheat  and  the  Catalogue's  spite ! 
Old  time  is  a  liar  !     We're  twenty  to-night ! 

"  We're  twenty!     We're  twenty!     Who  says  we  are  more? 
He's  tipsy, — young  jackanapes  ! — show  him  the  door! 
1  Gray  temples  at  twenty  ? ' — Yes  !  white  if  you  please  ; 
Where  the  snow-flakes  fall  thickest  there's  nothing  can  freeze." 

—  The  Boys. 

"  We  see  that  Time  robs  us,  we  know  that  he  cheats, 
But  we  still  find  a  charm  in  his  pleasant  deceits, 
While  he  leaves  the  remembrance  of  all  that  was  best, 
Love,  friendship,  and  hope,  and  the  promise  of  rest." 

— Our  Banker. 

"  I  have  come  to  grow  young — on  my  word  I  declare 
I  have  thought  I  detected  a  change  in  my  hair ! 
One  hour  with  '  the  boys  '  will  restore  it  to  brown, — 
And  a  wrinkle  or  two  I  expect  to  rub  down." 

—  What  I  Have  Come  For. 

2.  Colloquial  Habit  — Familiarity —  Self-Revela- 
tion.— "  The  colloquial  habit  of  the  Autocrat  is  so  marked 
generally  as  to  be  called  distinctive.  It  is  the  quality  of  all 
the  authors  who  are  distinctly  beloved  as  persons  by  their 
readers,  and  it  is  to  this  class  that  Holmes  especially  belongs. 
Without  the  private  personal  touch  of  the  essayist  in 
his  stories  they  would  not  be  his.  His  colloquial  habit  is 
very  winning  when  governed  by  a  natural  delicacy  and  an  ex- 
quisite literary  instinct.  No  other  author  takes  the  reader 
into  his  personal  confidence  more  closely  than  Holmes,  and 
52 


8l8  HOLMES 

none  reveals  his  personal  temperament  more  clearly. 
The  kindly  mentor  takes  the  reader  by  the  button  and  lays 
his  hand  upon  his  shoulder,  not  with  the  rude  familiarity  of 
the  bully  or  the  boor,  but  with  the  courtesy  of  Montaigne,  the 
friendliness  of  John  Aubrey,  or  the  wise  cheer  of  Selden. 
The  reader  glows  with  the  pleasure  of  an  individual  greeting, 
and  a  wide  diocese  of  those  whom  the  Autocrat  never  saw 
plume  themselves  proudly  upon  his  personal  acquaintance." 
— George  William  Curtis. 

"  His  dialogues  and  stories  are  in  every  way  the  expression 
of  a  stimulating  personage,  their  author — a  frank  display  of 
the  Autocrat  himself.  .  .  .  His  writings  surely  owe  their 
main  success  to  an  approximate  exhibition  of  the  author  him- 
self."—^. C.  Stedman. 

"  There  is  something  akin  to  affection  which  connects  such 
poets  with  their  readers,  when  poet  and  readers  are  at  their 
best.  They  cannot  be  Shelleys,  but  they  win  by  warmth, 
though  they  dazzle  not  by  splendor.  Poets  of  this  class  put 
their  individual  selves  into  iambus  and  trochee.  Their  per- 
sonal attractiveness  is  transmuted  into  poetic  force.  .  .  . 
Manliness  finds  in  Holmes  a  friend  and  culture  a  companion." 
— C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  He  was — and  is — one  of  the  few  writers  who  are  present 
at  the  reading  of  their  own  works — a  conversationalist  in  type, 
on  paper — a  dear  friend  living  between  the  covers  of  a  printed 
book.  .  .  .  He,  more  than  most  men,  liked  the  sym- 
pathy of  those  for  whom  he  wrote,  and  was  willing  to  secure 
it  by  advances  toward  them,  in  which  ...  he  revealed 
his  personality."  —  Edward  Everett  Hale. 

"  There  is  a  flavor  of  personality  which  can  never  be  mis- 
taken.    On  every  page  you  see  '  Holmes,  his  mark.' 
The  absence  of  formality  is  one  of  the  principal  charms. 
His  unique  personality  was  as  dear  as  his  writings. 
His  works  have  put  him  in  intimate  personal  rela- 
tion with  all  readers  of  refined  feeling." — F.  If.  Underwood. 


HOLMES  819 

"  What  he  wrote  that  he  was,  and  every  one  felt  this  who 
met  him.  ...  [It  is]  the  Autocrat  in  his  best  moods — 
those  moments  when,  all  barriers  of  invention  and  situation 
broken  down,  the  author  talks  face  to  face,  or  rather  soul 
to  soul,  consciousness  to  consciousness,  with  the  reader. "- 
W.  D.  Howells. 

"  The  one  most  charming  feature  of  his  printed  and  spoken 
conversation  is  that  he  established  a  relation  of  sympathy 
between  himself  and  his  readers,  or  listeners,  by  expressing 
for  them  those  common  every-day  thoughts  that  we  all  think 
but  rarely  say.  .  .  .  The  sunshine  of  his  soul  gleams  out 
upon  you  so  often  that  you  forget  the  offensive  egotism  of  the 
cit  in  the  charm  of  the  artless  humor  and  tender  sympathy  of 
his  nature." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"  Dr.  Holmes  had  put  not  only  the  best  but  absolutely  all, 
both  of  himself  and  about  himself  into  the  volumes  with  which 
he  had  amused  and  instructed  the  English-speaking  world." 
— -J.  T.  Morse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  care  not  much  for  gold  or  land  ; — 

Give  me  a  mortgage  here  and  there, — 

Some  good  bank-stock,  some  note  of  hand, 
Or  trifling  railroad  share, — 

I  only  ask  that  Fortune  send 

A  little  more  than  I  shall  spend." — Contentment. 

"  O  Damsel  Dorothy  !     Dorothy  Q.  ! 
Strange  is  the  gift  that  I  owe  to  you  ; 

What  if,  a  hundred  years  ago, 

Those  close-shut  lips  had  answered  No, 

When  forth  the  tremulous  question  came 

That  cost  the  maiden  her  Norman  name, 

And  under  the  folds  that  look  so  still 

The  bodice  swelled  with  the  bosom's  thrill  ? 

Should  I  be  I,  or  would  it  be 

One-tenth  another  to  nine-tenths  me  ?  "—Dorothy  Q. 


820  HOLMES 

"  For  myself,  I'm  relied  on  by  friends  in  extremities, 
And  I  don't  mind  so  much  if  a  comfort  to  them  it  is  ; 
'T  is  a  pleasure  to  please,  and  the  straw  that  can  tickle  us 
Is  a  source  of  enjoyment  though  slightly  ridiculous." 

— At  the  Atlantic  Dinner. 

3.  Unconventionality  —  Simple  Treatment  of 
Weighty  Themes. — "  The  researches  of  most  scientific 
men,  especially  in  abstruse  subjects,  like  the  relations  of  body 
and  mind,  are  preserved  in  works  which  the  public  cannot 
understand  if  they  should  try.  What  Tyndall  has  done  in 
the  interpretation  of  the  laws  of  nature  is  done  even  more 
brilliantly  by  Holmes ;  and  this  is  not  due  to  any  letting 
down  of  the  subject ;  it  is  rather  furnishing  the  means  for  the 
ordinary  mind  to  ascend  to  the  higher  level  of  thought. 
The  truth  was,  prosaic  folks  had  no  way  to  estimate 
Holmes.  They  wrote  only  stately  sentences,  while  he  was 
free,  when  he  chose,  to  use  the  simplest  language  of  every-day 
life.  The  ideas  they  would  formally  promulgate  in  methodical 
order  he  lashed  upon  the  reader  with  a  dazzling  wit."— 
F.  H.  Underwood. 

"'Soundings  from  the  Atlantic'  are  certainly  unique  in 
their  combination  of  airy,  humorous  treatment  with  solid 
scientific  discussion  or  teaching." — W,  S.  Kennedy. 

"[He  is]  a  kind  of  attenuated  Franklin  who  views  things 
with  less  robustness  but  keener  distinction  and  insight.  .  .  . 
Somewhat  distrustful  of  'the  inner  light,'  he  stands  square- 
ly upon  observation,  experience,  and  induction." — E.  C. 
Stedman. 

"  People  could  not  believe  that  a  man  so  perfectly  intelli- 
gible could  be  profoundly  wise.  .  .  .  Mystic  Holmes 
might  be,  but  mysterious  he  never  was." — W.  D.  Howells. 

"He  is  peculiarly  exasperating  to  theological  opponents 
.  .  .  for  the  very  easy  way  in  which  he  gayly  overlooks 
considerations  which  their  whole  culture  has  induced  them  to 
deem  of  vital  moment." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


HOLMES  821 

"  There  is  no  straining  for  effect ;  simple,  natural  thoughts 
are  expressed  in  simple  and  perfectly  transparent  language." 
—  Whittier. 

"  [Dr.  Holmes  has  been  fond  of  exploring]  that  weird 
border-land  between  science  and  speculation  where  psychol- 
ogy and  physiology  exercise  mixed  jurisdiction." — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Be  firm !  one  constant  element  in  luck 
Is  genuine,  solid,  old  Teutonic  pluck  ; 
See  yon  tall  shaft ;  it  felt  the  earthquake's  thrill, 
Clung  to  its  base,  and  greets  the  sunrise  still. 

Don't  catch  the  fidgets  ;  you  have  found  your  place 
Just  in  the  focus  of  a  nervous  race, 
Fretful  to  change,  and  rabid  to  discuss, 
Full  of  excitements,  always  in  a  fuss  ; — 
Think  of  the  patriarchs  ;  then  compare  as  men 
These  lean-cheeked  maniacs  of  the  tongue  and  pen  ! 
Run,  if  you  like,  but  try  to  keep  your  breath  ; 
Work  like  a  man,  but  don't  be  worked  to  death." 

—  Urania. 

"  We,  like  the  leaf,  the  summit,  and  the  wave, 
Reflect  the  light  our  common  nature  gave  ; 
But  every  sunbeam,  falling  from  her  throne, 
Wears  on  our  hearts  some  coloring  of  our  own  ; 
Chilled  in  the  slave,  and  burning  in  the  free, 
Like  the  sealed  cavern  by  the  sparkling  sea ; 
Lost,  like  the  lightning,  in  the  sullen  clod, 
Or  shedding  radiance,  like  the  smiles  of  God  ; 
Pure,  pale  in  Virtue,  as  the  star  above, 
Or  quivering  roseate  in  the  leaves  of  Love." — Poetry. 

"  Lady,  life's  sweetest  lesson  wouldst  thou  learn, 

Come  thou  with  me  to  Love's  enchanted  bower : 
High  overhead  the  trellised  roses  burn  ; 
Beneath  thy  feet  behold  the  feathery  fern, — 
A  leaf  without  a  flower. 


822  HOLMES 

"  What  though  the  rose-leaves  fall  ?     They  still  are  sweet, 

And  have  been  lovely  in  their  beauteous  prime, 
While  the  bare  frond  seems  ever  to  repeat, 
*  For  us  no  bud,  no  blossom  wakes  to  greet 
The  joyous  flowering  time  ! ' 

"  Heed  thou  the  lesson.     Life  has  leaves  to  tread 

And  flowers  to  cherish  ;  summer  round  thee  glows  ; 

Wait  not  till  autumn's  fading  robes  are  shed, 

But  while  its  petals  still  are  burning  red 

Gather  life's  full-blown  rose." — The  Rose  and  the  Fern. 


4.  Piquant   Satire  — Graceful   Badinage.  - 

metrical  satires  are  of  the  amiable  sort  that  debars  him  from 
kinmanship  with  the  Juvenals  of  old  or  the  Popes  and 
Churchills  of  more  recent  time.  .  .  .  Yet  he  is  a  keen 
observer  of  the  follies  and  chances  which  satire  makes  its 
food.  As  his  humor  had  relaxed  the  grimness  of  a  Puritan 
constituency,  so  his  prose  satire  did  much  to  liberalize  their 
clerical  system." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"All  his  trenchant  bits  of  criticism  and  pretended  dogma- 
tism have  attached  to  them,  like  a  corollary,  a  little  hint  that 
the  cure  for  it  all  is  chanty — the  understanding  of  other  men 
better.  .  .  .  Do  you  remember  '  Urania,  a  Rhymed 
Lesson,'  away  back  in  his  youthful  days — with  what  good 
humor  it  picked  out  all  the  little  solecisms  of  dress,  manners, 
and  talk,  and  yet  left  the  perpetrators,  while  entirely  cured, 
feeling  as  though  they  were  laughed  with  and  not  at?" 
R.  W.  Gilder. 

"  Holmes  is  distinctively  and  purely  a  satirist,  and  for  a 
lifetime  has  been  lashing  others  with  the  most  stinging  and 
excoriating  satire  (tempered  with  humor  and  good-nature). 
.  .  .  When  at  his  best,  his  humor  has  the  genial  and 
kindly  character  which  marks  that  of  all  great  humorists  ;  but 
too  often  it  is  only  an  ironical  smirk,  a  sardonical  grin,  a 
laughing  at  others  instead  of  with  them."  —  W.  S.  Kennedy. 


HOLMES  823 

"  His  are  just  the  fine  hands,  too,  to  weave  you  a  lyric 
Full  of  fancy,  fun,  feeling,  or  spiced  with  satiric, 
In  a  measure  so  kindly,  you  doubt  if  the  toes 
That  are  trodden  upon  are  your  own  or  your  foe's." 

—Lowell. 

"His  manner  of  satirizing  the  foibles  ...  of  con- 
ventional life  is  altogether  peculiar  and  original.  .  .  . 
He  looks  at  folly  and  pretension  from  the  highest  pinnacle  of 
scorn.  They  never  provoke  his  indignation,  for  to  him  they 
are  too  mean  to  justify  anger,  and  are  hardly  worth  petu- 
lance."—^. P.  Whipple. 

11  The  two  bete  noirs  of  Holmes  are  homoeopathy  and  end- 
less punishment,  and  he  never  lets  an  opportunity  pass  of 
giving  a  thrust  at  either.  .  .  .  The  pleasantry  is  never 
mocking  or  malevolent,  and  the  exuberance  of  spirit  is  con- 
tagious."— F.  H.  Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  My  aunt !  my  poor  deluded  aunt ! 
Her  hair  is  almost  gray ; 
Why  will  she  train  that  winter  curl 
In  such  a  springlike  way  ? 
How  can  she  lay  her  glasses  down, 
And  say  she  reads  as  well, 
When,  through  a  double  convex  lens, 
She  just  makes  out  to  spell  ?  " — My  Aunt. 

"  Don't  mind  if  the  index  of  sense  is  at  zero, 

Use  words  that  run  smoothly,  whatever  they  mean  ; 
Leander  and  Lilian  and  Lillibullero 

Are  much  the  same  thing  in  the  rhyming  machine. 

"  As  for  subjects  of  verse,  they  are  only  too  plenty 

For  ringing  the  changes  on  metrical  chimes  ; 
A  maiden,  a  moonbeam,  a  lover  of  twenty 

Have  filled  that  great  basket  with  bushels  of  rhymes." 

— A  Familiar  Letter. 


824  HOLMES 

"  I  think  there  is  a  knot  of  you 
Beneath  the  hollow  tree, — 
A  knot  of  spinster  Katydids, — 
Do  Katydids  drink  tea  ? 

Oh,  tell  me,  where  does  Katy  live, 

And  what  did  Katy  do  ? 

And  was  she  very  fair  and  young, 

And  yet  so  wicked,  too  ? 

Did  Katy  love  a  naughty  man, 

Or  kiss  more  cheeks  than  one  ? 

I'll  warrant  Katy  did  no  more 

Than  many  a  Kate  has  done." — To  an  Insect. 

5.  Exuberant,  Dazzling  Wit.—"  The  movement  of 
his  wit  is  so  swift  that  it  is  known  only  when  it  strikes.  He 
will  sometimes,  as  it  were,  blind  the  eyes  of  his  victims  with 
diamond-dust,  then  pelt  them  pitilessly  with  scoffing  compli- 
ments. He  passes  from  the  sharp  and  stinging  gibe  to  the 
most  grotesque  exaggerations  of  drollery  with  a  most  bewil- 
dering rapidity." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  There's  Holmes,  who  is  matchless  among  you  for  wit; 
A  Leyden-jar  always  full-charged,  from  which  flit 
The  electrical  tingles  of  hit  after  hit." — Lowell. 

"  His  wit  is  all  his  own,  so  sly  and  tingling,  but  without  a 
drop  of  ill-nature  in  it,  and  never  leaving  a  sting  behind." 
— Francis  Bowen. 

"  A  restless  wit  that  sees  the  different  sides,  the  contradic- 
tions, and  cannot  forbear  to  flash  upon  the  eye  all  the  vari- 
ous angles  of  truth,  while  never  ceasing  to  take  the  view  of 
the  poet."— G.  P.  Lathrop. 

"If  any  of  our  readers  need  amusement  and  the  wholesome 
alterative  of  a  hearty  laugh,  we  commend  them,  not  to  Dr. 
Holmes  the  physician,  but  to  Dr.  Holmes  the  scholar,  the 
wit,  and  the  humorist.  He  was  born  for  the  '  laughter-cure' 
as  certainly  as  Priessnitz  was  for  the  *  water-cure,'  and  has 
been  quite  as  successful  in  his  way." — Whittier. 


HOLMES  825 

"  Holmes's-  rapier  of  wit  and  his  social  genius  were  so 
flashing  and  brilliant  that  few  realized  his  vigor  as  a  philoso- 
pher and  thinker." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"As  a  writer  of  comic  poetry  he  is  excelled  by  no  other 
English  author.  Hood's  verses  are  not  so  gayly  radiant  as 
Holmes's, — do  not  strike  the  diaphragm  so  deeply.  .  .  . 
The  comic  in  him  is  always  saved  from  Rodomontade  and 
monstrosity  by  an  equipoise  of  shrewd  practical  sense ;  we 
tremble  as  his  glowing  wheel  grazes  the  brim  of  bombast  and 
folly;  but,  with  a  cut  of  the  lash  and  a  short  turn  away,  he 
flies  again,  laughing,  and  we  laughing  with  him." — W.  S. 
Kennedy. 

"  Probably  few  of  our  wits  have  done  so  many  set  tasks  in 
the  'funny  line,'  and  done  them  so  well  as  he;  and  few, 
with  any  celebrity  as  wits,  have  so  rarely  set  themselves  to 
tasks  of  their  own  in  that  line." — -J.  T.  Morse. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  times  were  hard  when  Rip  to  manhood  grew  ; 
They  always  will  be  when  there's  work  to  do ; 
He  tried  at  farming — found  it  rather  slow — 
And  then  at  teaching — what  he  didn't  know. 

"  Talk  of  your  science  !  after  all  is  said 

There's  nothing  like  a  bare  and  shiny  head  ; 
Age  lends  the  graces  that  are  sure  to  please  ; 
Folks  want  their  doctors  mouldy,  like  their  cheese." 

—Rip  Van  Winkle,  M.D. 

"And  there's  our  well-dressed  gentleman,  who  sits, 
By  right  divine,  no  doubt,  among  the  wits  ; 
Who  airs  his  tailor's  patterns  when  he  walks, — 
The  man  that  often  speaks,  but  never  talks." 

—  The  Banker's  Dinner. 


826  HOLMES 

"  What  dreams  we've  had  of  deathless  name,  as  scholars,  states- 
men, bards, 

When  Fame,  the  lady  with  the  trump,  held  up  her  picture- 
cards  ! 

Till,  having  nearly  played  our  game,  she  gayly  whispered, 
'Ah!' 

I  said  you  should  be  something  grand, — you'll  soon  be  grand- 

papa."—  To  the  Harvard  Alumni. 

6.  Fanciful  Humor. — "  To  write  good  comic  verse  is  a 
different  thing  from  writing  good  comic  poetry.  A  jest  or  a 
sharp  saying  may  easily  be  made  to  rhyme;  but  to  blend 
ludicrous  ideas  with  fancy  and  imagination  and  to  display  in 
their  conception  and  expression  the  same  poetic  qualities 
usually  exercised  in  serious  composition,  is  a  rare  distinction. 
Among  American  poets  we  know  of  no  one  who  excels 
Holmes  in  this  difficult  branch  of  art.  .  .  .  Many  of 
his  pleasant  lyrics  seem  not  so  much  the  offspring  of  wit  as 
of  fancy  and  sentiment  turned  in  a  humorous  direction.  "- 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  For  clear  and  unstudied  humor,  a  sense  of  which  creeps 
slowly  and  delightfully  throughout  the  whole  frame,  the  poems 
of  the  young  contributor  [to  the  Collegian]  were  superior  to 
those  of  Hood,  the  great  humorist  of  that  day. 
Holmes  is  greatest  as  a  humorist.  When  at  its  best  his 
humor  has  the  genial  and  kindly  character  which  marks  that 
of  all  the  great  humorists." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

II  It  does  not  appear  that  anyone  else  did  so  much  as  Dr. 
Holmes    to  change  the  social  temper  of   New  England,   to 
make  it  less  harsh  and  joyless,  and  to  make  easier  for   his  fel- 
low-countrymen the  transition  from  old  things  to  new."- 
/.  W.  Chadwick. 

"  [Holmes' s  humor  is]  fun  shading  down  to  seriousness  and 
seriousness  shading  up  to  fun." — Lowell. 
"  You  with  the  classic  few  belong 

Who  tempered  wisdom  with  a  smile." — Lowell. 


HOLMES  827 

"  His  humor  is  so  grotesque  and  queer  that  it  reminds  one 
of  the  frolics  of  Puck." — Francis  Bowen. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  How  the  mountains  talked  together, 
Looking  down  upon  the  weather, 
When  they  heard  our  friend  had  planned  his 
Little  trip  among  the  Andes ! 
How  they'll  bear  their  snowy  scalps 
To  the  climber  of  the  Alps 
When  the  cry  goes  through  their  passes, 
1  Here  comes  the  great  Agassiz  ! '  " 

— A  Farewell  to  Agassiz. 

"  I  know  it  is  a  sin 
For  me  to  sit  and  grin 

At  him  here  ; 

But  the  old  three-cornered  hat, 
And  the  breeches,  and  all  that, 

Are  so  queer ! 

"  And  if  I  should  live  to  be 
The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree 

In  the  spring, 

Let  them  smile,  as  I  do  now, 
At  the  old  forsaken  bough 

Where  I  cling."  —The  Last  Leaf. 


"  Since  then  on  many  a  car  you'll  see 
A  broom-stick  plain  as  plain  can  be  ; 
On  every  stick  there's  a  witch  astride,- 
The  string  you  see  to  her  leg  is  tied. 
She  will  do  mischief  if  she  can, 
But  the  string  is  held  by  a  careful  man  ; 
And  whenever  the  evil-minded  witch 
Would  cut  some  caper,  he  gives  a  twitch." 

—  The  Broomstick  Train. 


828  HOLMES 

7.  Pathos.— "  The  poet  of  <  The  Last  Leaf  was  among 
the  first  to  teach  his  countrymen  that  pathos  is  an  equal  pare 
of  true  humor  ;  that  sorrow  is  lightened  by  jest  and  jest  re- 
deemed from  coarseness  by  emotion,  under  most  conditions  oi 
this  our  evanescent  human  life." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  fun  in  Holmes  is  always  jostling  the  pathos.  .  .  . 
Its  ["  The  Last  Leafs  "]  pathos  is  all  the  more  surprising  irj 
connection  with  the  queer  humor  in  the  description  of  the  old 
man  who  is  the  subject  of  the  poem.  .  .  .  After  some 
comic  picture,  grotesque  phrase,  or  quick  thrust,  the  reader 
comes  suddenly  upon  a  stanza  of  perfect  beauty  of  form,  with 
the  gentlest  touch  of  natural  feeling." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  Broadly  speaking,  Holmes  is  Janus-faced  ;  that  is,  he  has 
a  dual  nature :  he  laughs  on  one  side  of  his  face,  and  is  seri- 
ous on  the  other;  in  one  mood  fun,  humor,  laughing  satire 
predominate;  he  is  .  .  .  a  Yorick,  a  Mercutio,  and  as 
nimble-witted  as  they ;  but  suddenly  some  hidden  spring  of 
feeling  or  pathos  is  touched,  the  eyes  brim  with  tears,  and  the 
soul  soars  upward  in  a  rapt  passion  of  tenderest  sentiment. 
His  finest  humor  borders  close  upon  pathos." — W. 
S.  Kennedy. 

"  And  his  the  pathos  touching  all 

Life's  aims  and  sorrows  and  regrets, 
Its  hopes  and  fears,  its  final  call 

And  rest  beneath  the  violets." — Whittier. 

11  '  Homesick  in  Heaven  '  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most 
profoundly  pathetic  poems  in  the  language." — W.  D.  How- 
ells. 

11  Such  lyrics  as  «  La  Grisette  '  and  '  The  Last  Leaf  '  show 
that  he  possesses  the  power  of  touching  the  deeper  chords  of 
the  heart  and  of  calling  forth  tears  as  well  as  smiles." — Whit- 
tier. 

"  It  is  the  pathos  in  the  last  of  these  lines  [in  «  The  Last 
Leaf  ]  that  makes  the  richness  of  the  humor,  a  pathos  that  is 
deep  and  sympathetic.  If  he  laughs  at  what  is  amusing  in  the 


HOLMES  829 

deeds  or  in  the  characters  of  men,  he  can  weep  with  them, 
too  ;  and  by  his  weeping  he  shows  that  he  is  fully  alive  to 
their  distress  and  their  sorrows.  It  is  only  a  moment's  touch 
from  laughter  to  tears ;  and  he  has  truly  recognized  the  fact 
that  pathos  lies  deeper  in  the  nature  than  humor,  and  that 
humor  must  have  its  basis  in  the  pathetic  when  it  is  most  ser- 
viceable and  most  human." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  Still  in  thy  human  tenderness  they  feel 
The  honest  voice  and  beating  heart  of  Steele. ' ' 

— Edmund  Gosse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  If  any,  born  of  kindlier  blood, 
Should  ask,  What  maiden  lies  below  ? 
Say  only  this  :  'A  tender  bud, 
That  tried  to  blossom  in  the  sun, 
Lies  withered  where  the  violets  blow.'" 

—  Under  the  Violets. 

A  few  can  touch  the  magic  string, 
And  noisy  Fame  is  proud  to  win  them  : — 

Alas  for  those  that  never  sing, 

But  die  with  all  their  music  in  them  ! 

"  Oh,  hearts  that  break  and  give  no  sign 

Save  whitening  lip  and  fading  tresses, 
Till  Death  pours  out  his  longed-for  wine 

Slow-dropped  from  Misery's  crushing  presses  !  " 

—  The  Voiceless. 

'  Youth  longs,  and  manhood  strives,  but  age  remembers, 

Sits  by  the  raked-up  ashes  of  the  past, 
Spreads  its  thin  hands  above  the  whitening  embers 
That  warm  its  creeping  life-blood  till  the  last. 

"  Dear  to  its  heart  is  every  loving  token 

That  comes  unbidden  ere  its  pulse  grows  cold, 
Ere  the  last  lingering  ties  of  life  are  broken, 

Its  labors  ended  and  its  story  told." —  The  Iron  Gate. 


830  HOLMES 


8.  Point— Epigram— Whimsical  Paradox.— "  The 
most  obvious  characteristic  of  Holmes's  poetry  is  its  combined 
terseness  and  finish.     The  lines  are  often  poetical  proverbs 
or  epigrams  with  vigor  and  point  in  every  phrase." — F.  H. 
Underwood. 

11  His  shrewd  sayings  are  bright  with  native  metaphor  ;  he 
is  a  proverb-maker,  some  of  whose  words  are  not  without 
wings.  .  .  .  His  pertinent  maxims  are  so  frequent  that 
it  seems  as  if  he  had  jotted  them  down  from  time  to  time  and 
here  first  brought  them  to  application  ;  they  are  apothegms 
of  common  life  and  action,  often  of  mental  experience,  strung 
together  by  a  device  so  original  as  to  make  the  work  quite  a 
novelty  in  literature." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  When  the  Autocrat  himself  begins  talking,  the  sparks  of 
epigram  fly  in  a  bracing  wind  of  free  thought,  as  scintillating 
particles  of  snow  are  whirled  from  the  roofs  in  winter  by 
every  chance  breeze." — Helen  Gray  Cone. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  style's  the  man,  so  books  avow  ; 
The  style's  the  woman,  anyhow." 

— How  the  Old  Horse  Won  the  Bet. 

"  No  iron  gate,  no  spiked  and  panelled  door, 
Can  keep  out  death,  the  postman,  or  the  bore." 

— A  Modest  Request. 

"  I  always  thought  cold  victuals  nice  ;  — 

My  choice  would  be  vanilla  ice." — Contentment. 

11  And  with  new  notions — let  me  change  the  rule — 
Don't  strike  the  iron  till  it's  slightly  cool."— Urania. 

9.  Sportive  Fancy. —  "Like  his  wit,  humor,  and  pathos, 
this  frolicsome  fancy  marks  everything  that  Holmes  has  writ- 
ten.    In  the  contributions  [to  the  New  England  magazines] 


HOLMES  831 

of  the  young  graduate  the  high  spirits  of  a  frolicsome  fancy 
effervesce  and  sparkle." — George  William  Curtis. 
"  That  song  has  flecked  with  rosy  gold 
The  sails  that  fade  o'er  fancy's  sea." 

—  William  Winter. 

It  riots  in  his  measures  .  .  .  — fancy  which  he 
tenders  in  lieu  of  imagination  and  power.  The  consecutive 
poems  of  one  whose  fancy  plays  about  life  as  he  saw  it  may  be 
a  feast  complete  and  epicurean,  having  solid  dishes  and  fan- 
tastic, all  justly  savored,  cooked  with  discretion,  flanked  with 
honest  wine,  and  whose  cates  and  dainties,  even,  are  not  de- 
signed to  cloy — a  fancy  whose  glint,  if  not  imagination,  is  like 
that  of  the  sparks  struck  off  from  it.  ...  To  this  day 
[1885]  there  is  no  telling  whither  a  fancy,  once  caught  and 
mounted,  will  bear  this  lively  rider." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  His  sense  of  the  ludicrous  is  not  keener  than  his  sense  of 
the  beautiful ;  his  wit  and  humor  are  but  the  sportive  exercise 
of  a  fancy  and  imagination  which  he  has  abundantly  exer- 
cised on  serious  topics." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Out  of  the  medley  of  bright  thoughts  and  quaint  satire 
shine  gleams  of  brilliant  fancy.  His  extraordinary  alertness 
of  mind  enables  him  to  expound  his  subject  by  a  variety  of 
ingenious  images,  to  decorate  it  with  novel  suggestions,  and 
to  throw  upon  it  many  charming  side-lights." — R.  E.  Pro- 
thero. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  lady  of  a  thousand  loves, 

The  darling  of  the  old  religion, 
Had  only  left,  of  all  the  doves 

That  drew  her  car,  one  fan-tailed  pigeon. 

"  The  goddess  spoke,  and  gently  stripped 

Her  bird  of  every  caudal  feather  ; 
A  strand  of  gold-bright  hair  she  clipped, 
And  bound  the  glossy  plumes  together. 


832  HOLMES 

"  And  lo,  the  Fan  !  for  beauty's  hand 

The  lovely  queen  of  beauty  made  it ; 
The  price  she  named  was  hard  to  stand, 
But  Venus  smiled  :  the  Hebrew  paid  it." 

—  The  First  Fan. 

"  This  is  the  ship  of  pearl,  which,  poets  feign, 
Sails  the  unshadowed  main, — 

The  venturous  bark  that  flings 

On  the  sweet  summer  wind  its  purpled  wings 

In  gulfs  enchanted  where  the  Siren  sings, 
And  coral  reefs  lie  bare, 
Where  the  cold  sea-maids  rise  to  sun  their  streaming  hair." 

—  7*he  Chambered  Nautilus. 

"  At  last  young  April,  ever  frail  and  fair, 

Wooed  by  her  playmate  with  the  golden  hair, 

Chased  to  the  margin  of  receding  floods 

O'er  the  soft  meadows  starred  with  opening  buds, 

In  tears  and  blushes  sighs  herself  away, 

And  hides  her  cheek  beneath  the  flowers  of  May." 

— Spring. 

10.  Sincerity  —  Honesty—  Manliness.  —  Although 
many  of  his  victims,  theological  and  medical,  have  writhed 
under  the  poet's  castigations,  all  admit  his  honesty  and  his 
entire  freedom  from  that  morbidness  and  sentimentality  that 
sometimes  mar  the  work  of  great  writers.  From  the  critic 
of  Holmes's  first  volume,  who  declares  that  "  there  is  not  a 
particle  of  humbug  in  him,"  to  that  reviewer,  writing  after 
the  poet's  death,  who  wishes  for  a  list  "  of  the  men  now  in 
middle  age  whose  mental  tone  has  been,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, considerably  influenced  by  the  kindly  castiga- 
tion,  until  they  seem  intolerable  of  shams  and  half-baked  pre- 
tences that  otherwise  they  might  have  gone  on  tolerating," 
— through  all  those  fifty  years  the  Autocrat  ever  spoke  in 
what  Bayard  Taylor  fitly  calls  "  that  freshness  and  heartiness 
of  tone  which  springs  from  a  fountain  lower  than  the  brain." 


[OLMES 

"  He  is  fresh  and  manly  even  when  he  securely  treads  the 
scarcely-marked  line  which  separates  sentiment  from  senti- 
mentality. .  .  .  He  valorously  invites  and  courts  the  ma- 
licious sharpness  of  the  most  unfriendly  criticism.  By  thus 
daring,  provoking,  and  defying  opposition  both  to  his  pro- 
fessional and  literary  reputation,  he  seems  to  us  to  indicate  a 
real  if  somewhat  impatient  love  of  truth.  .  .  .  Nobody 
can  justly  appreciate  Holmes  who  does  not  perceive  an  imper- 
sonal earnestness  and  insight  beneath  the  play  of  his  provok- 
ing personal  wit.  .  .  .  Even  his  petulances  of  sarcasm 
are  but  eccentric  utterances  of  a  love  of  truth  which  has  its 
source  in  the  deepest  and  gravest  sentiments  of  his  nature." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

— "  Young  Doctor  Green  and  shrewd  old  Doctor  Gray — 

They  heard  the  story — '  Bleed  ! '  says  Doctor  Green, 

1  That's  downright  murder  !  cut  his  throat,  you  mean  ! 

Leeches  !  the  reptiles !     Why,  for  pity's  sake, 

Not  try  an  adder  or  a  rattlesnake  ? 

Blisters  !     Why,  bless  you,  they're  against  the  law  ! 

It's  rank  assault  and  battery  if  they  draw  ! 

The  portal  system  !     What's  the  man  about  ? 
Unload  your  nonsense !     Calomel's  played  out !  " — 

— Rip  Van  Winkle,  M.D. 

11 1  tell  you,  there  was  generous  warmth  in  good  old  English  cheer  ; 
I  tell  you,  't  was  a  pleasant  thought  to  bring  its  symbol  here ; 

"  'T  is  but  the  fool  that  loves  excess  ;  hast  thou  a  drunken  soul  ? 
Thy  bane  is  in  thy  shallow  skull,  not  in  my  silver  bowl !  " 

—  On  Lending  a  Punch  Bowl. 

"Yet,  true  to  our  course,  though  the  shadows  grow  dark, 

We'll  trim  our  broad  sail  as  before, 
And  stand  by  the  rudder  that  governs  the  bark, 
Nor  ask  how  we  look  from  the  shore." 

— Sun  and  Shadow. 
53 


834  HOLMES 

II.  Earnestness  —  Serious  Purpose. — Those  who 
estimate  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  merely  as  a  wit  come  far 
short  of  a  true  conception  of  the  man  and  of  his  genius.  He 
was  by  no  means  unaware  of  the  risk  he  ran  of  being  miscon- 
strued by  that  very  large  and  highly  respectable  race  of  critics 
and  readers  who  mistake  dull  sobriety  for  wisdom,  and  con- 
found wit  with  buffoonery.  In  one  of  his  anniversary  poems, 
written  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  literary  career,  he  says  to 
the  friends  who  have  urged  him  to  lend  his  song  to  their 
merriment : 

"  Besides,  my  prospects — don't  you  know  that  people  won'  tern- 
ploy 

A  man  that  wrongs  his  manliness  by  laughing  like  a  boy, 
And  suspect  the  azure  blossom  that  unfolds  upon  a  shoot, 
As  if  wisdom's  old  potato  could  not  flourish  at  its  root  ?  " 

"Holmes  is  not  only  a  < funny  man  '  but  a  great  poet,  great 
on  high  and  noble  themes,  and  still  greater  in  drawing  the 
truest  poetry  from  the  most  humble,  homely,  and  even  comi- 
cal subjects.     ...     He  possesses  the  power  of  touching 
the  deeper  chords  of  the  heart  and  of  calling  forth  tears  as 
well  as  smiles.     .     .     .     The  serious  purpose  is  hardly  hid- 
den beneath  the  light-hearted  play  of  any  of  Holmes's  works. 
Wisdom  or  joke,  fun  or  retrospect,  there  is  a  pur- 
pose behind  it  all. ' ' — Edward  Everett  Hale. 
' '  His  sparkling  surface  scarce  betrays 

The  tide  of  thought  beneath  it  rolled — 
The  wisdom  of  the  latter  days 

And  tender  memories  of  the  old." — Whittier. 
"  Dr.  Holmes's  inevitable  gayety  and  exhilaration  have  in 
a  measure  concealed  the  deep  earnestness  of  the  man,  his  love 
of  truth,  his  devotion  to  humanity,   his  passion  for  excel- 
lence."— O.  B.  Frothingham. 

"He  is  not  more  a  wit  than  a  philosopher.  Indeed, 
behind  all  his  humor  is  a  motive  of  strong  moral  purpose. 
.  .  .  He  does  not  believe  in  joy  and  happiness  at  the 


HOLMES  835 

expense  of  virtue  or  at  the  expense  of  truth.  He  has  been  a 
preacher  all  his  life  of  the  most  serious  gospel  of  duty  and 
fidelity.  .  .  .  More  than  one-half  of  his  published 
verses  are  on  serious  subjects  and  in  very  earnest  mood. 
Several  of  his  best  poems  are  marked  by  a  lofty  spiritual 
aspiration,  and  they  touch  some  of  the  deepest  sentiments  in 
human  nature." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"With  Holmes  the  sparkles  of  wit  are  like  bubbles  on  a 
strong  tide  of  feeling." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"Though  all  the  world  thinks  of  Dr.  Holmes  as  a  wit,  he 
was,  in  fact,  a  writer  with  very  grave  and  serious  purposes. 
.  .  .  He  was  a  man  profoundly  in  earnest,  deeply  con- 
scientious, He  wrote  under  an  ever-present  sense  of  respon- 
sibility."—/. T.  Morse. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 
As  the  swift  seasons  roll ! 
Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past ! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 
Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea." 

—  The  Chambered  Nautilus. 


"  Lord  of  all  life,  below,  above, 
Whose  light  is  truth,  whose  warmth  is  love, 
Before  thy  ever-blazing  throne 
We  ask  no  lustre  of  our  own. 


"  Grant  us  thy  truth  to  make  us  free, 
And  kindling  hearts  that  burn  for  thee, 
Till  all  thy  Jiving  altars  claim 
One  holy  light,  one  heavenly  flame  !  " 

— A  Sun-Day  Hymn. 


836  HOLMES 

"  Enough  of  speech  !  the  trumpet  rings  ; 

Be  silent,  patient,  calm, — 
God  help  them  if  the  tempest  swings 
The  pine  against  the  palm." 

— A  Voice  of  the  Loyal  North. 

/    12.  Localism — Sectionalism. — Few  writers  have  been 
//s6  attached  to  a  locality  and  few  volumes  are  so  tinged  with 
localism  as  are  those  of  Holmes. 

"  He  is  an  essential  part  of  Boston,  like  the  crier  who 
becomes  so  identified  with  a  court  that  it  seems  as  if  Justice 
must  change  her  quarters  when  he  is  gone.  The  Boston  of 
Holmes,  distinct  as  his  own  personality,  certainly  must  go 
with  him." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Dr.  Holmes  had  the  passion  of  local  patriotism. 
His  familiar  habit  of  mind  was  cordially  local.     His  affection 
fastened  upon  his  college  and  on  his  class ;  he  loved  the  city 
of  his  life  with  the  passion  of  the  man  who  can  be  at  home  in 
only  one  place." — If.  E.  Scudder. 

"  He  is  a  part  of  the  past  of  Boston.  ...  In  becom- 
ing famous  he  did  not  cease  to  be  local.  It  was  as  a  Boston 
man  that  he  was  known." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

11  Holmes  is  essentially  a  New  Englander,  and  one  of  the 
most  faithful  and  shrewd  interpreters  of  New  England."- 
George  William  Curtis. 

"  He  is  fairly  Boston's  laureate'.  .  .  .  He  believed  in 
Boston  as  Johnson  did  in  London." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  The  streets  of  London  were  not  more  beloved  by  John- 
son and  Lamb  than  those  of  Boston  have  been  by  Holmes. 
He  has  made  only  short  swallow-flights  beyond  the 
limits  of  his  own  beloved  city.  If  he  goes  to  Paris,  he 
carries  Boston  with  him  ;  if  he  goes  to  New  York  or  Philadel- 
phia, he  only  sighs  and  compares  them  with  Boston  to  their 
disadvantage,  and  gets  back  as  quick  as  he  can  to  the  hub  of 
the  solar  system.  A  barnacle  is  not  more  closely  identified 
with  its  rock  or  a  pearl  with  its  oyster  than  Holmes  with  St. 


HOLMES  837 

Botolph's  town.  All  his  books  might  be  labelled  '  Talks  with 
My  Neighbors,'  and  this  very  provincialism  or  urban  patriot- 
ism forms  their  chief  charm.  He  is  indigenous ;  throws  up 
New  England  sub-soil  as  he  ploughs;  his  homespun  characters 
speak  the  native  patois,  and  the  whole  tone  of  his  writings 
is  unaffectedly  Yankee." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"  Dr.  Holmes  was  a  New  Englander  from  the  central 
thread  of  his  marrow  to  his  outermost  rind ;  he  could  have 
made  himself  nothing  else ;  he  knew  this  and  accepted  it,  not 
as  a  limitation,  but  with  a  just  pleasure  and  sense  of  power." 
— /.  T.  Morse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

— "  Nicest  place  that  ever  was  seen, — 
Colleges  red  and  Common  green, 
Sidewalks  brownish,  with  trees  between. 
Sweetest  spot  beneath  the  skies, 
When  the  canker  worms  don't  rise, — 
When  the  dust,  that  sometimes  flies 
Into  your  mouth  and  ears  and  eyes, 
In  a  quiet  slumber  lies." 

— Parson  Turelts  Legacy. 

"  New  England,  we  love  thee  ;  no  time  can  erase 

From  the  hearts  of  thy  children  the  smile  on  thy  face. 
'T  is  the  mother's  fond  look  of  affection  and  pride, 
As  she  gives  her  fair  son  to  the  arms  of  his  bride." 

—  To  the  New  England  Society. 

"  And  were  it  any  spot  on  earth 

Save  this  dear  home  that  gave  him  birth 

Some  scores  of  years  ago, 
He  had  not  come  to  spoil  your  mirth 

And  chill  your  festive  glow  ; 
But  round  his  baby-nest  he  strays, — 
With  tearful  eye  the  scene  surveys, 
His  heart  unchanged  by  changing  days, — 

That's  what  he'd  have  you  know." 

—  Old  Cambridge. 


838  HOLMES 

13.  Conservatism — Quaintness. — "The  distinction 
between  his  poetry  and  that  of  the  new  makers  of  society  verse 
is  that  his  is  a  survival,  theirs  the  attempted  revival,  of  some- 
thing that  has  gone  before.  He  wears  the  seal  of  '  that  past 
Georgian  day  '  by  direct  inheritance.  His  work  is  as  emblem- 
atic of  the  past  as  are  the  stairways  and  hand-carvings  in 
various  houses  of  Cambridge.  His  verses  have  the  courtesy 
and  wit,  without  the  pedagogy,  of  the  knee-buckle  time,  and 
a  flavor  that  is  really  their  own.  He  has  an  ear  for  the  classi- 
cal forms  of  English  verse.  The  conservative  persistency  of 
his  muse  is  as  notable  in  matter  as  in  manner.  He  takes  un- 
kindly to  sentimental  attempts  at  reform.  .  .  .  Innova- 
tion savors  ill  to  his  nostril Dr.  Holmes  stands  for 

the  ancestral  feeling  as  squarely  as  he  refutes  the  old  belief. ' ' 
— E.  C,  Stedman. 

"  There  is  a  great  deal  in  Holmes  that  reminds  one  of 
William  Spencer,  of  Crabbe,  Pope,  Hood,  and  the  prize 
poets  of  the  English  universities.  .  .  .  How  closely  the 
lyrics  of  Dr.  Holmes  resemble  those  of  Goldsmith  and  Pope 
no  careful  reader  needs  to  be  told." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"For  him  we  can  find  no  living  prototype;  to  track  his 
footsteps,  we  must  go  back  as  far  as  Pope  or  Dryden.  .  .  . 
Lofty,  poignant,  graceful,  grand,  high  of  thought,  and  clear  of 
word,  we  could  fancy  ourselves  reading  some  pungent  page 
of  '  Absalom  and  Achitophel,'  were  it  not  for  the  pervading 
nationality." — Mary  Russell  Mitford. 

"  There  is  visible  in  his  writings  also  some  of  that  homely 
astuteness  which  seems  to  have  died  out  with  the  polish  of 
modern  manners.  .  .  .  He  has  remained  loyal  to  eigh- 
teenth century  models.  .  .  .  This  very  conservatism  in 
regard  to  models  may  be  a  guaranty  of  enduring  fame." — P. 
H.  Underwood. 

"The  extraordinary  success  which  Dr.  Holmes  has  had 
in  adhering  to  an  antiquated  form  of  verse  is  due  to  its  ad- 
mirable fitness  to  be  the  vehicle  of  his  mind.  .  .  .  The 


HOLMES  839 

conservatism  observable  in  his  poetry  was  characteristic  of  his 
entire  nature." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  In  Dr.  Holmes's  make  up  conservatism  in  things  political 
and  social  was  curiously  compounded  with  the  progressive 
tendency  in  religious  thought." — J.  T.  Morse. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

' '  I  love  the  memory  of  the  past— its  pressed  yet  fragrant  flowers,— 
The  moss  that  clothes  its  broken  walls— the  ivy  on  its  towers  ; — 
Nay,  this  poor  bauble  it  bequeathed,— my  eyes  grow  moist  and 

dim, 

To  think  of  all  the  vanished  joys  that  danced  around  its  brim." 

— On  Lending  a  Punch  Bowl. 

"  Full  seven  score  years  our  city's  pride — 

The  comely  Southern  spire — 
Has  cast  its  shadow,  and  defied 
The  storm,  the  foe,  the  fire ; 
Sad  is  the  sight  our  eyes  behold  ; 

Woe  to  the  three-hilled  town, 
When  through  the  land  the  tale  is  told — 
'  The  brave  "  Old  South"  is  down.'  " 

— An  Appeal  for  the  Old  South  Church. 

"Friends  of  the  Muse,  to  you  of  right  belong 
The  first  staid  foot-steps  of  my  square-toed  song; 
Full  well  I  know  the  strong  heroic  line 
Has  lost  its  fashion  since  I  made  it  mine ; 
But  there  are  tricks  old  singers  will  not  learn, 
And  this  grave  measure  still  must  serve  my  turn." 

— At  a  Medical  Dinner. 

14.  Adaptability— Occasionalism.— While  his  humor 
resembles  that  of  Steele  and  Lamb,  and  his  wit  that  of  Hood 
and  Lowell,  Dr.  Holmes  has  one  characteristic  in  which  he 
surpasses  all  other  writers  pre-eminently.  He  is,  of  all  poets, 


840  HOLMES 

the  poet  of  occasion.  An  examination  of  his  works  reveals  no 
less  than  thirty-two  poems  written  for  anniversaries  of  "that 
happy  class  "  of  1829  at  Harvard,  while  we  mid  seventy-five 
other  poems  written  for  as  many  other  commemorative  occa- 
sions. 

"  The  things  which  sharply  distinguish  Holmes  from  other 
poets  are  the  lyrics  and  metrical  essays  composed  for  special 
audiences  or  occasions.  He  is  our  typical  university  poet; 
the  minstrel  of  the  college  that  bred  him,  and  within  whose 
liberties  he  has  taught,  jested,  sung,  and  toasted  from  boy- 
hood to  what  in  common  folk  would  be  old  age. 
With  his  own  growth  his  brilliant  occasional  pieces  strength- 
ened in  thought,  wit,  and  feeling.  .  .  .  How  sure  their 
author's  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things,  his  gift  of  adaptability 
to  the  occasion  !  Now,  what  has  carried  Holmes  so  bravely 
through  all  this  if  not  a  kind  of  special  masterhood,  an  indi- 
viduality, humor,  touch,  that  we  shall  not  see  again  ?  Thus 
we  come,  in  fine,  to  be  sensible  of  the  distinctive  gift  of  this 
poet."— E.  C.  Stedman. 

11  Holmes  was  class  poet  at  Harvard,  and  he  remained 
class  poet  all  his  life.  .  .  .  After  reading  a  dozen  or 
more  pages  of  the  neat  Augustan  couplets  of  Holmes' s  best 
verse  dj  occasion,  you  have  the  comfortable  feeling  of  a  man 
who  has  just  dispatched  a  dish  of  hickory-nuts  cracked  in 
halves  and  intermingled  with  raisins." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"As  the  poet  of  occasion,  no  one  has  ever  surpassed 
him.  .  .  .  He  was  always  apt,  always  happy,  always  had 
the  essential  lightness  of  touch  and  the  right  mingling  of  wit 
and  sentiment." — Henry  Cabot  Lodge. 

"  Throughout  the  year  [as  editor  of  the  Atlantic~\  I  could 
count  upon  him  for  those  occasional  pieces  in  which  he  so 
easily  excelled  all  former  writers  of  occasional  verse." — W. 
D.  Howells. 

"  Holmes  has  been  a  great  part  of  what  he  sings,  at  Cam- 
bridge, at  the  old  Saturday  Club,  at  King's  Chapel.  The 


HOLMES  841 

subject  delights  him,  and  perhaps  this  is  why  his  occasional 
verses  are  uniformly  so  successful.  To  him  the  occasion  is  all 
that  inspiration  is  to  the  less  ready  and  versatile  poet — a  true 
gift  of  the  muse." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  He,  of  all  men,  seemed  to  have  the  invention,  the  dash, 
and  the  native  grace  which  give  to  occasional  verse  its  natural 
and  spontaneous  air." — F.  H.  Underwood. 
"  For  still  as  comes  the  festal  day, 

In  many  a  temple  far  and  near, 
The  word  that  all  have  longed  to  say, 

The  words  that  all  are  proud  to  hear, 
Fall  from  his  lips  with  conquering  sway, 
Or  grave  or  gay." — William  Winter. 
"We  doubt  whether  any  other  poet  has  done  so  much  to 
lift  the  '  occasional '  into  the  classic.     With  the  exception  of 
some  half  dozen  poems  of  Goethe's  and,  perhaps,  one  of  Camp- 
bell's, Mr.  Holmes  is  unrivalled  in  his  power  of  flashing  the 
light  of  higher  thought  and  the  fragrance  of  lofty  sentiment 
upon  the  banquet  or  commemorative  meeting.     In  fact,  this 
is  one  of  his  native  gifts,  which  has  been  so  frequently  and 
delightfully  exercised  that  it  may  lead  some  of  his  readers  to 
overlook  his  admirable  lyrics." — Bayard  Taylor. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  You'll  believe  me,  dear  boys,  'tis  a  pleasure  to  rise, 
With  a  welcome  like  this  in  your  darling  old  eyes ; 
To  meet  the  same  smiles  and  to  hear  the  same  tone, 
Which  have  greeted  me  oft  in  the  years  that  have  flown. 

"  Were  I  gray  as  the  grayest  old  rat  in  the  wall, 
My  locks  would  turn  brown  at  the  sight  of  you  all  ; 
If  my  heart  were  as  dry  as  the  shell  on  the  sand, 
It  would  fill  like  the  goblet  I  hold  in  my  hand." 

— Our  Indian  Summer, 


842  HOLMES 

"  Adieu  !  I've  trod  my  annual  track 

How  long  ! — let  others  count  the  miles, — 
And  peddled  out  my  rhyming  pack 
To  friends  who  always  paid  in  smiles." 

—  Chanson  without  Music. 

"  Will  I  come?    That  is  pleasant!     I  beg  to  inquire 
If  the  gun  that  I  carry  has  ever  missed  fire  ? 
And  which  was  the  muster-roll — mention  but  one — 
That  missed  your  old  comrade  who  carries  the  gun  ?  " 

— Once  More. 

15.  Conviviality. — Like  Dickens,  Holmes  is  sometimes 
fond  of  extolling  the  merits  of  the  cup ;  like  Dickens  again,  he 
covets,  not  the  physical  effects,  but  the  mental  exhilaration 
and  the  good-fellowship  attendant  on  a  moderate  use  of  wine. 

"  [He  was]  decidedly  a  conservative  in  general  tendency. 
With  all  the  abundant  flow  of  hilarity  in  some  of  his  class 
songs,  he  can  scarcely  be  called  jovial  ;  and,  in  spite  of  his 
having  written  a  fine  bacchanalian  song,  he  is  by  nature  and 
habit  abstemious." — P.  If.  Underwood. 

"  Many  of  his  youthful  stanzas  are  in  celebration  of  com- 
panionship and  good  cheer.  .  .  .  Even  his  ballads  are 
raciest  when  brimmed  with  the  element  which  most  attracts 
their  author,  that  of  festive  good-fellowship." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

Dr.  Holmes  has  clearly  expressed  his  own  position  on  this 
point  in  one  stanza  of  his  famous  poem  "  On  Lending  a 
Punch  Bowl:" 

"  I  tell  you  there  was  generous  warmth  in  good  old  English 

cheer  ; 

I  tell  you  'twas  a  pleasant  thought  to  bring  its  symbol  here ; 
'Tis  but  the  fool  that  loves  excess — hast  thou  a  drunken  soul, 
Thy  bane  is  in  thy  shallow  skull,  not  in  my  silver  bowl." 

"  He  has  Pepys's  hearty  enjoyment  of  life — loves  rowing, 
racing,  trees,  women,  flowers,  perfumes,  and  a  well-furnished 
table."—  W.  S.  Kennedy. 


HOLMES  843 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Flash  out  a  stream  of  blood-red  wine, 

For  I  would  drink  to  other  days, 
And  brighter  shall  their  memory  shine, 

Seen  flaming  through  its  crimson  blaze ! 
The  roses  die,  the  summers  fade, 

But  every  ghost  of  boyhood's  dream 
By  nature's  magic  power  is  laid 

To  sleep  beneath  this  blood-red  stream  !  " 

— Mare  Rubrum. 


"  This  ancient  silver  bowl  of  mine,  it  tells  of  good  old  times, 
Of  joyous    days,    and    jolly    nights,    and    merry    Christmas 

chimes  ; 

They  were  a  free  and  jovial  race,  but  honest,  brave,  and  true, 
That  dipped  their  ladle  in  the  punch  when  this  old  bowl  was 

new." — On  Lending  a  Punch  Bowl. 

"  And  yet,  among  my  native  shades,  beside  my  nursing-mother, 
Where   every  stranger   seems   a   friend,  and   every  friend  a 

brother, 

I  feel  the  old  convivial  glow  (unaided)  o'er  me  stealing, — 
The  warm,  champagny,  old-particular,  brandy-punchy  feeling." 

— Nux  Postcoenatica. 


16.  Power  of  Portraiture. — Holmes  has  shown  himself 
a  master  in  those  single  touches  which,  like  the  single  strokes 
of  the  painter,  cause  a  figure  to  stand  out  before  us  in  bold 
relief. 

"  He  has  few  superiors  in  discernment  of  a  man's  individ- 
uality, however  distinct  that  individuality  may  be  from  his 
own.  ...  I  do  not  recall  a  more  faithful  and  graphic 
outside  portrait  [essay  on  Emerson].  True,  it  was  done  by 
an  artist  who  applies  the  actual  eye,  used  for  actual  vision,  to 
the  elusive  side  of  things,  and  who  thinks  little  too  immaterial 


844  HOLMES 

for  the  test  of  reason  and  science.  .  .  .  But  it  sets  Em- 
erson before  us  in  both  his  noon-day  and  sun-down  moods  ; 
in  his  character  as  a  town-dweller  and  also  as  when  he  '  looked 
upon  this  earth  as  a  visitor  from  another  planet  would  look  on 
it.  '  "-E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  [In  "  Before  the  Curfew  "]  he  sketches  for  us  portraits  of 
Longfellow,  Agassiz,  Emerson,  and  Hawthorne  which  may 
well  be  placed  beside  any  that  have  been  drawn  of  these  fa- 
vorites of  New  England's  literary  age.  ...  [In  his 
"Vignettes,"  the  portraits  of  Wordsworth,  Keats,  Shelley, 
Moore,  Dickens,  Burns,  etc.]  his  lines  take  hold  of  us  like 
the  grasp  of  a  friendly  hand." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  Certain  types  of  New  England  characters  are  sketched  in 
coarse  raw  pigment  with  great  fidelity,  but  when  the  author  is 
depicting  his  subordinate. and  ruder  personages,  you  generally 
receive  the  impression  of  grotesque  exaggeration  and  carica- 
ture. .  .  .  He  has  an  irresistible  tendency  to  indulge 
in  a  kind  of  horse-play,  a  coarse  realism  of  portraiture,  to  a 
great  extent  lacking  in  the  subtle  and  delicate  touch  by  which 
the  great  novelists  reveal  the  hidden  springs  of  feeling  and 
nobleness,  even  in  their  least  prominent  characters." — W.  S. 
Kennedy. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  By  the  white  neck-cloth,  with  its  straightened  tie, 
The  sober  hat,  the  Sabbath-speaking  eye, 
Severe  and  smileless,  he  that  runs  may  read 
The  stern  disciple  of  Geneva's  creed. 


A  livelier  bearing  of  the  outward  man, 

The  light-hued  gloves,  the  undevout  rattan, 

Now  smartly  raised  or  half  profanely  twirled, 

A  bright,  fresh  twinkle  from  the  week-day  world, 

Tell  their  plain  story  ;  yes,  thine  eyes  behold 

A  cheerful  Christian  from  the  liberal  fold." — Urania, 


HOLMES 

Ah,  gentlest  soul !  how  gracious,  how  benign 
Breathes  through  our  troubled  life  that  voice  of  thine  ! 
Filled  with  a  sweetness  born  of  happier  spheres, 
That  wins  and  warms,  that  kindles,  softens,  cheers, 
That  calms  the  wildest  woe  and  stays  the  bitterest  tears." 

—  To  Longfellow. 


"  The  lark  of  Scotia's  morning  sky  ! 

Whose  voice  may  sing  his  praises  ? 
With  Heaven's  own  sunlight  in  his  eye, 

He  walked  among  the  daisies, 
Till  through  the  cloud  of  fortune's  wrong 

He  soared  to  fields  of  glory  ; 
But  left  his  land  her  sweetest  song 

And  earth  her  saddest  story." — On  Burns. 


INDEX 


"ABSALOM  and  Achitophel  "  quot- 
ed, 142,  149,  152,  152,  155 
"  Abt  Vogler  "  quoted,  699 
Addison  quoted,  76,  101,  119,  161 
"  Address  to  a  Mouse  "  quoted,  225 
"Address  to   Edinburgh"  quoted, 

231 
"Address     to    the     Unco     Quid" 

quoted,  236 

"Adeline  "  quoted,  768 
"  After  a  Tempest  "  quoted,  558 
"  Afterthought  "  quoted,  474 
"Ages,  The,"  quoted,  568,  571,  572 
Ainger,  A.,  quoted,  7,  16 
"  Alastor  "  quoted,  355 
Alcott,  A.  B. ,  quoted,  504 
"  Alexander's  Feast  "  quoted,  147 
"  Allegory,  An,"  quoted,  341 
"  Alphonso  of  Castile  "  quoted,  520 
"  Amalfi  "  quoted,  639 
u  Amoretti  "  quoted,  84 
"Ancient   Mariner,    Rime   of  the," 

quoted,  424,  431,  431 
"  Antiquity     of     Freedom,     The," 

quoted,  551 
"Apparent    Failure"   quoted,   696, 

70S 

"  Appenines,  To  the,"  quoted,  562 
"  A  Prophecy  "  quoted,  327 
Arnold,    Matthew,   quoted,  99,  112, 
115,  122,  301,   320,  325,  407,  463, 
468,  480,  486,  489,   503,  513,  516, 
519,  524,  528 

Arnold,  Thos. ,  quoted,  391,  405 
"Artemisia"  quoted,  188,  207 
"  A  Satire  against  Sedition  "  quoted, 

151.  iSi 

"  Astraea  Redux  "  quoted,  162 
"Atlantic  Dinner,  At  the,"  quoted, 

820 

"A  Tragic  Fragment  "  quoted,  236 
"  Aurengezebe,  Prologue  to,"  quot- 
ed, 160 

"  Autocrat,  Our,"  quoted,  749 
"Autumn  "  quoted,  643 
"  Autumn  Woods  "  quoted,  552 
"  Autumnal  Evening,  Lines  on  an," 

quoted,  435 
"Aylmer's  Field"  quoted,  784,  790 


BAGEHOT,    W.,  quoted,   116,  256, 

284,  340,  343,  346,   348,  350,  357, 

359,  368,  370,  699,  782 
"  Balaustion's  Adventure  "  quoted, 

689 

"  Ballad  on  Gentilesse  "  quoted,  23 
Bancroft,  G.,  quoted,  504,  816 
"Banker's    Dinner,    The,"   quoted, 

825 

"  Bannockburn  "  quoted,  231 
Bartol,  C.  A.,  quoted,  639,  654 
Bayne,    P.,    quoted,   767,   793,   801, 

803 
"  Beautie,  An   Hymne  in    Honour 

of,"  quoted,  72 

"Beauty,  Ode  to,"  quoted,  526 
Beecher,  H.  W.,  quoted,  248 
Beers,  H.  A.,  quoted,  719,  793,  797 
"  Beggars,  The  Jolly,"  quoted,  227 
"  Belfry   of  Bruges,  The,"  quoted, 

641 
"  Big  Bellied  Bottle,  The,"  quoted, 

249 

Bigelow,  J.,  quoted,  554,  570 
"  Bigelow  Papers"  quoted,  597,  603 
"  Bishop  Orders  His  Tomb  "  quoted, 

701 
Blackie,  J.  S. ,  quoted,  224,  227,  230, 

238,  243 
Birrell,  Augustine,  quoted,  112,  180, 

187,  202,  687,  693 
"  Blindness,  Milton's  Sonnet  on  his 

Own,"  quoted,  124 
"  Blissful  Day,  The,"  quoted,  246 
"Blot  in  the   Scutcheon"   quoted, 

711 

'  Boston  "  quoted,  514 
"  Boston  Hymn,  The,"  515 
"  Botanist,  The,"  quoted,  511 
Bowen,  F.,  quoted,  824,  827 
Boyesen,  H.  H.,  quoted,  688,  816 
"  Boys,  The,"  quoted,  817 
"Branded     Hand,    The,"    quoted, 

73? 

"  Bridal  of  Pennacook,  The,"  quot- 
ed, 750 
Brooke.  Stopford,  quoted,  8,  12,  18, 

26,  100,    no,  112,    115,    122,   219, 

223,  230,  232,  241,  259,  269,    271, 


847 


848 


INDEX 


280,  286,  422,  426,  436,  441,  462, 
471,  477,  484,  488,  493,  494,  684, 
689,  694,  697,  704,  771,  779,  783, 
787,  803 

"  Broomstick  Train,  The,"  quoted, 
827 

"  Brothers,  The,"  quoted,  480 

Browning,  analysis  of  character  by, 
682  ;  argumentation,  his  fondness 
for,  706  ;  bibliography  of  criticism 
on,  677-679  ;  biographical  outline 
of,  658-677  ;  chaotic  sentence 
structure  of,  686 ;  character,  his 
analysis  of,  682 ;  characteristics  of, 
679-713  ;  cool  satire  of,  704  ;  dra- 
matic power  of,  708  ;  earnestness 
of,  702  ;  faith,  his  strong  religious, 
697  ;  fondness  for  monologue  of, 
690  ;  fondness  for  argumentation 
of,  706  ;  fortitude,  his  robust,  693  ; 
grotesqueness  of,  699  ;  incongruity 
of,  699  ;  intense  vigor  of,  679 ;  in- 
trospection of,  682  ;  inversion  of, 
686  ;  monologue,  his  fondness  for, 
690  ;  mastery  of  rhyme  by,  712  ; 
obscurity  of,  686 ;  optimism  of, 
693  ;  quoted  as  critic,  352,  361  ; 
religious  faith,  his  strong,  697 ; 
rhyme,  his  mastery  of,  712  ;  robust 
fortitude  of,  693  ;  satire,  his  cool, 
704 ;  sentence  structure,  his  chaot- 
ic, 686 ;  soberness  of,  702  ;  strong 
faith  of,  697  ;  vigor,  his  intense, 
679 

Browning,    Mrs.,    quoted,    101,  112, 

138,  159,  171,  265,  471,  473 
'  Bryant,  Whittier  to,"  quoted,  749, 

"  Building  of  the  Ship,  The,"  quoted, 
648 

Bryant,  apostrophe,  his  fondness  for, 
573  'i  bibliography  of  criticism  on, 
548-549  ;  biographical  outline  of, 
520-548 ;  calm  trust  of,  in  Provi- 
dence, 570 ;  characteristics  of,  549 ; 
correctness  of,  562 ;  dignity  of, 
549  ;  elevation  of,  549  ;  fondness  of 
for  apostrophe,  573 ;  fulness  of, 
560 ;  genuineness  of,  552  ;  har- 
mony of,  568  ;  majesty  of,  559 ; 
meditation,  his  profound,  571  ; 
melody  of,  568  ;  melancholy,  his 
pensive,  564 ;  nationality  of,  566  ; 
naturalness  of,  552 ;  nature,  his 
sensibility  to,  555  ;  particular  char- 
acteristics of,  549;  patriotism  of, 
566 ;  pensive  melancholy  of,  564  ; 
precision  of,  562  ;  profound  medi- 
tation of,  571 ;  reserve  of,  549  ;  sen- 
sibility of,  to  nature,  555  ;  serenity 
°f»  549  !  sincerity  of,  552  ;  sublim- 


ity of,  559  ;  suggestiveness  of,  560 ; 
tenderness  of,  554  ,  trust  of,  in 
Providence,  570;  sympathy,  his 
broad  human,  231  ,  tenderness  of, 
222 ;  vigor  of,  225  ;  warmth  of  af- 
fection, his,  244 

"  Burial  of  the  Minnisink"  quoted, 
657 

"  Burns,  On  "  (Holmes),  quoted,  845 

Burns,  affection,  his  warmth  of,  244 ; 
bibliography  of  criticism  on,  216- 
218  ;  biography  of,  208-216  ;  broad 
human  sympathy  ot,  231 ;  coarse- 
ness of,  247  ;  conviviality  of,  247  ; 
descriptive  power  of,  239  ;  humor, 
his  kindly,  242 ;  indignation  of, 
236  ;  insight,  moral  of,  231 ;  kindly 
humor  of,  242  ;  manliness  of,  218  ; 
moral  insight  of,  231  ;  naturalness 
of,  218  ;  pathos  of,  222  ;  patriotism 
of,  228  ;  picturesqueness  of,  239  ; 
quoted  as  critic,  228 ;  ridicule  of, 
236  ;  scorn  of,  236  ;  sensuality  of, 
247  ;  sincerity  of,  218  ;  spirit  of, 
225  ;  sportiveness  of,  242  ;  sublim- 
ity of,  249 

Burroughs,  J.,  quoted,  504,  506,  507, 
510,  512,  522,  527 

Byron,  abruptness  of,  397  ;  beauty, 
his  thoughtful,  467 ;  bibliography 
of  criticism  on,  383-385  ;  biograph- 
ical outline  of,  372-383  ;  character- 
istics, his  particular,  385-410  ;  con- 
trast, his  harsh,  397  ;  depravity  of, 
402;  egotism  of,  392;  eloquence, 
his  lofty,  408  ;  grandeur  of,  400  ; 
harsh  contrast  of,  397  ;  intensity 
of,  385  ;  invective,  his  power  of, 
395  ;  lofty  eloquence  of,  408  ;  mag- 
nificence of,  400 ;  malignity  of, 
389  ;  misanthropy  of,  389  ;  particu- 
lar characteristics  of,  385-410  ;  pas- 
sion of,  385  ;  power  of  invective, 
his,  395  ;  profligacy  of,  402  ;  quoted 
as  critic,  310 ;  self-revelation  of, 
392  ;  thoughtful  beauty  of,  407 

"  CAIN  "  quoted,  388,  402 

Caine,  H.,  quoted,  312,422 

"  Caliban   upon  Setebos  "   quoted, 

701 

Campbell,  T.,  quoted,  85,  232,  241 
Carlyle  quoted,    113,  218,  222,  226, 

228,  233,  236,  239,  242,  244, 248,  249, 

419,  444 

"  Cassandra  Southwick  "  quoted,  747 
"  Castaway,  The,"  quoted,  263 
Castelar,  E. ,   quoted,  387,  390,  396 

398,  401,  407 
"  Catawba  Wine  "  quoted,  648 


INDEX 


849 


"Cenci,  The,"  quoted,  360 

"  Centennial  Hymn  "  quoted,  744 

Chadwick,  J.  W. ,  quoted,  816,  826 

Chalmers,  T. ,  quoted,  53 

"  Chambered  Nautilus,  The,"  832, 

"  Chamouni,  Hymn  in  the  Vale  of," 
quoted,  421 

"  Changeling,  The,"  quoted,  603,  606 

Channing,  W.  E.,  quoted,  101,  104, 
no,  116,  118,  120 

"  Chanson  without  Music  "  quoted, 
842 

"  Charity  "  (Cowper)  quoted,  276 

"  Charity  "  (Whittier)  quoted,  738 

"  Charles  Sumner,"  Whittier  on, 
quoted,  749 

"  Charles  the  Second,  Epistle  to," 
quoted,  157 

"  Chatterton,  on  the  Death  of,"  quot- 
ed, 421 

Chaucer,  artlessness  of,  5  ;  bibliog- 
raphy of  criticism  on,  4-5  ;  bio- 
graphical outline  of,  1-3  ;  charac- 
ter, his  portrayal  of,  31 ;  character- 
istics of,  5-37  ;  coarseness  of,  36 ; 
elevation  of  character  of,  21  ;  love 
of  nature,  his,  17  ;  genial  humor  of, 
n  ;  freshness  of,  5  ;  humor,  his 
genial,  n  ;  kindly  satire  of,  n  ; 
liquid  smoothness  of,  8 ;  minute- 
ness of,  27  ;  naturalness  of,  5  ;  nar- 
rative power  of,  24 ;  nature,  his 
love  of,  17  ;  pathos,  his  simple,  14  ; 
portrayal  of  character  by,  31  ;  real- 
ism of,  27  ;  respect  of,  for  wom- 
anhood, 16 ;  satire,  his  kindly, 
n  ;  simple  pathos  of,  14  ;  single 
strokes  of,  27 ;  smoothness,  his 
liquid,  8  ;  sympathy  of,  wiih  suffer- 
ing, 14  ;  vividness  of,  27  ;  woman- 
hood, his  respect  for,  16 

Cheever,  G.  B. ,  quoted,  262,  265,  275, 
280 

Child,  Professor,  quoted,  83 

44  Childe  Harold  "  quoted,  392,  394, 
395,  408,  409,  409 

"  Christabel  "  quoted,  425,  427,  428. 

"  Christening  of  a  Friend's  Child,  On 

the,"  quoted,  442 
"Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day" 

quoted,  713 
Church,  R.  W.,  quoted,  48,  53,  58, 

61,  66,  73,  78,  82,  463,  466,  470,  480, 

485  490,  493,  689 
"  Clerke's  Tale,  The,"  quoted,  8, 10, 

15 

"  Cloud,  The,"  quoted,  356 
Coleridge,  H.,  quoted,  141,  151 

54 


Coleridge,  abstraction  of,  443  ;  as- 
similation by,  438  ;  beauty,  his  im- 
aginative, 432 ;  bibliography  of 
criticism  on,  418-419  ;  biographical 
outline  of,  411-417 ;  characteristics, 
his  peculiar,  419-451  ;  confusion  of, 
439  ;  eloquence,  his  Miltonic,  419  ; 
finish  of,  432  ;  imaginative  beauty 
of  432  ;  imitation  of,  438  ;  lack  of 
logical  sequence,  his  443  ;  logical 
sequence,  his  lack  of,  443  ;  Milton- 
ic eloquence  of,  419  ;  musical  ver- 
sification of,  425  ;  obscurity  of,  443 ; 
particular  characteristics  of,  419- 
451  ;  picturesqueness  of,  428 ; 
quoted  as  critic,  462,  471,  480,  481, 
490  ;  realistic  supernaturalism  of, 
422 ;  self-reflection  of,  436 ;  se- 
quence, his  lack  of  logical,  443  ; 
seriousness  of,  436  ;  sublimity  of, 
419  ;  supernaturalism  of,  422  ;  ten- 
derness of,  430 ;  unevenness  of, 
439  ;  versification,  his  musical,  425 
"  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again  " 

quoted,  78,  84 
44  Columbus  "  quoted,  605 
Colvin,  S.,  quoted,  315,  684,  706 
"  Commemoration    Ode  "     quoted, 

59i,  595 

"  Compensation  "  quoted,  505,  509 
"  Comus  "  quoted,  107,  116,  123 
Cone,  H.  G.,  quoted,  830 
"  Conjunction  of  Jupiter  and  Venus, 

The,"  quoted,  573 
"  Contentment  "  quoted,  819,  830 
"  Contrite  Heart,  The,"  quoted,  263 
"  Conversation  "  quoted,  284 
Conway,  M.  D.,  quoted.  680,  689 
Cooke.G.  W.,  quoted,  514,681,  692, 

701,  816,  828,  834 
"Corsair,  The,"  quoted,  408 
"  Cotter's    Saturday   Night,  The," 

quoted,  231,  241 

"  Courtin',  The,"  quoted,  601,  607 
Courthope,  W.  J.,  quoted,  306,  309, 

315,  326,  354,  387,  391,  426,  444 
"  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  The," 

quoted,  650,  652 
Cowper,    allusions,    his     scriptural, 

283  ;  biographical  outline  of,  252, 

255  ;  bibliography  of  criticism  on, 
255.  256  I  charateristics  of,  256,  288  ; 
cheerful  submissiveness   of,   279  ; 
descriptive    power,    his    minute, 

256  ;  didacticism  of,  277  ;  fondness 
of,   for    seclusion,   259;    fantastic 
humor  of,  272  ;    genuineness    of, 
285  ;  gloominess  of,  262  ;  humor, 
his  fantastic,  272  ;  love   of  nature, 
his,  264  ;  minute  descriptive  power 


850 


INDEX 


of,  256  ;  morality,  his  unconven- 
tional, 277  ;  naturalness  of,  285  ; 
nature,  his  love  of,  264  ;  patriot- 
ism of,  271  ;  piety  of,  279  ;  quoted 
as  critic,  274,  275,  280  ;  satire,  his 
theoretical,  267  ;  scriptural  allu- 
sions of,  283  ;  sensitive  tenderness 
of,  275  ;  seclusion,  his  fondness 
for,  259 ;  shyness  of,  259  ;  simplic- 
ity of,  285  ;  sportiveness  of,  272  ; 
submissiveness,  his  cheerful,  279; 
sympathy  of,  275  ;  tenderness,  his 
sensitive,  257 ;  theoretical  satire 
of,  267 ;  unconventional  morality 
of,  277 

"  Craggs,  Ode  on  James,"  quoted, 
184 

Craik,  G.  L. ,  quoted,  78,  138,  241 

"  Cristina  "  quoted,  703 

Cromwell,  stanzas  on,  quoted,  140 

"  Crowded    Street,    The,"    quoted, 

565 

"  Cuckoo,  The,"  quoted,  489 
"  Cuckoo     and     the     Nightingale, 

The,"  quoted,  21 
"  Culture  "  quoted,  524 
Curtis,  G.  W.,  quoted,  553,  556,  563, 

564,  566,  584,  587,  597,  611,  614, 

631,  634,  648,  650,  653,  817,  831, 

836 

"  DAFFODILS,  The,"  quoted,  472 
"  Damsel  of    Peru,  The,"   quoted, 

569 

Dana,  R.  H. ,  quoted,  557 
"  Dandelion,  To  the,"  quoted,  593 
Daniel  quoted,  78 
"  Daphnaida  "  quoted,  56 
Dawson,  G.,  quoted,  259,  262,  278, 

281,  285 

Dawson,  W.  J.,  quoted,  791,  801 
"  Day  is  Done,  The,"  quoted,  639 
"  Death  of  Schiller,  The,"  quoted, 

S^i 

"  Dejection  :  An  Ode  "  quoted,  438 
DeQuincey    quoted,   173,    178,    187, 

192,    196,   199,  203,  205,  310,  317, 

SSL  359,  363.  439,  440,  445,  447 
"  Destiny  of  Nations,  The,"  quoted, 

421,  425,  446.451 
DeVere,   A.,   quoted,   71,  466,  484, 

490,  494 

"  Devil's  Walk,  The,"  quoted,  350 
"  Digby,  Ode  to   Robert,"   quoted, 

184 

Dobson,  A.,  quoted,  347,  355 
"  Don  Juan  "  quoted,  392,  399,  400, 

406 

"  Dora  "  quoted,  804 
"  Dorothy  Q  "  quoted,  819 


Dowden,  E.,  quoted,  46,  63,  67,  71, 
106,   ii2,   120,  341,    346,  350,  354, 
361,  364,   368,   370,  393,  423,  426, 
429,   430,   434,  438,   440,   445,  473, 
526,  687,  694,  787,  799 
"  Down  in  the  City  "  quoted,  707 
"Dream  of  Fair  Women,  A.,''  quot- 
ed, 768 

Dryden,  bibliography  of  criticism 
on,  136,  137  ;  biographical  out- 
line of,  131,  136  ;  adulation  of,  155  ; 
argument,  his  specious,  153 ;  bit- 
ing satire  of,  140  ;  bold  personal 
portraiture  of,  147  ;  bombast  of, 
155  ;  characteristics  of,  137,  162 ; 
coarseness  of,  157  ;  cold  intellectu- 
ality of,  137 ;  cool  satire  of,  140  ; 
directness  of,  149 ;  emotion,  his 
lack  of,  137  ;  excessive  panegyric 
of,  155 ;  incisiveness  of,  149  ;  in- 
tellectuality of,  137  ;  masculine 
vigor  of,  149  ;  metrical  skill  of, 
143  ;  panegyric,  excessive,  of,  155  ; 
pedantry  of,  159  ;  personal  por- 
traiture of,  147 ;  portraiture,  bold 
personal  of,  147  ;  satire,  cool  of, 
140 ;  sensuality  of,  157  ;  skill,  his 
metrical,  143 ;  specious  argument 
of,  153  ;  vanity  of,  159 ;  vigor, 
masculine,  of,  149 
Dryden's  lines  on  his  portrait 

quoted,  162 

u  Duddon,  The  River,"  quoted,  495 
"  Duchess  of  York,  Epistle  to  the," 

quoted,  157 

"  Dunciad,  The,"  quoted,  189,  195 
"  Duty,  Ode  to,''  quoted,  495 
"  Dying    Christian    to    His     Soul, 
The,"  quoted,  176 

"  EACH  and  All  "  quoted,  517 

"  Earth  "  quoted,  554 

"  Earth's     Immortalities  "     quoted, 

70S 

"  E.  L.,  To,"  quoted,  792 

"  Elegiac  Verse  "  (Longfellow)  quot- 
ed, 643 

"Elegy  on  the  Year  1788"  quoted, 
244 

"  Eleonora  "  quoted,  160 

Emerson,  Americanism  of,  514  ;  ap- 
preciation of  nature,  his,  515  ; 
bibliography  of,  criticism  on,  501- 
503  ;  biographical  outline  of,  497- 
501 ;  characteristics  of,  503-529  ; 
conciseness  of,  509  ;  condensation 
of,  509  ;  crudity,  his  frequent,  518  ; 
elevation,  moral  of,  505  ;  frequent 
crudity  of,  518 ;  individuality  of. 
507;;  intellectuality  of,  523  ;  lack  of 


INDEX 


logical  sequence,  527 ;  logical  se- 
quence, lack  of,  527 ;  lyric  power 
of,  520 ;  moral  elevation  of,  505  ; 
mysticism  of,  512  ;  nature,  his  ap- 
preciation of,  515  ;  obscurity  of, 
512  ;  optimism  of,  503 ;  particular 
characteristics  of,  503-529  ;  preci- 
sion of,  521  ;  quoted  as  critic,  219, 
229,  237,  553,  778 ;  sequence,  his 
lack  of  logical,  527;  serenity  of, 
503  ;  sincerity  of,  507  ;  spontaneity 
of,  520  ;  suggestiveness  of,  523  ; 
transcendentalism  of,  524 ;  whole- 
someness  of,  503 

44Endymion"  (Longfellow's),  quot- 
ed, 633 

44Endymion"  quoted,  304,  310,  311, 
319,  324,  324,  324,  326 
1  England  in  1819  "  quoted,  357 

"  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Review- 
ers "  quoted,  397 

11  Enoch  Arden  "  quoted,  784,  790, 
804 

44  Epipsychidion  "  quoted,  341 

"  Epistle  to  a  Lady,"  Pope's,  quot- 
ed, 207 

44  Epistle,  The,"  quoted,  702 

44  Epistle    to   Davie  "   quoted,   221, 
246 

44  Epistle  to  the  Rev.  John  McMath  " 
quoted,  221,  222 

41  Epithalamion  "  quoted,  50,  60,  71 

44  Essay  on  Criticism  "  quoted,  174, 
197,  198,  199,  203,  203,  205 
Essay  on  Man  "  quoted,  172,  197, 
201,  20 1,  205 

44  Eternal  Goodness,  The,"  quoted, 

735 
'  Evangeline  "  quoted,  633,  651,  653 

44  Evening  Wind,  To  the,"  quoted, 
563 

Everett,  E.,  quoted,  553 

44  Excursion,  The,"  quoted,  463,  481, 
481,  485,  494 

"  Expostulation  "  quoted,  272,  278 

44  FABLE  for  Critics,  A,"  quoted,  586, 

596,  598,  600 
"  Faery  Queene,  The,"  quoted,  51, 

56,  61,  65,  70,  72,  77,  77,  82,  82,  84, 

44  Familiar  Letter,  A,"  quoted,  823 
4  Fatherland,  The,"  quoted,  591 
"  Farewell,   Burns's,    to   his   Native 

Country,"  quoted,  246 
44  Farewell  to  Agassiz,  A,"  quoted, 

827 

Farrar,  F.  W.,  quoted,  696,  786 
44  Fears  in   Solitude "   quoted,  430, 

438 


Felton,  C.  C.,  quoted,  516,  518,  523, 
526,  648,  770 

44  Fenton,  Mr.  Elijah,  Pope's  Ode 
on,"  quoted,  184 

44  Festina  Lentt  "  quoted,  594 

44  Fill  the  Goblet  Again  "  quoted,  406 

44  First  Advent  of  Love  "  quoted,  436 

44  First  Fan,  The,"  quoted,  831 

44  First  Snow-Fall,  The,"  quoted,  603 

Fiske,  J.,  quoted,  652 

44  Fitz  Adam's  Story  "  quoted,  595, 
598,  609 

"  Flight  of  the  Duchess,  The,"  quot- 
ed, 693,  712 

44  Forbearance  "  quoted,  524 

Foster,  J.,  quoted,  449 

44  France"  quoted,  439 

44  Fox,  On  the  Death  of  Mr. ,"  quoted, 

44  Fra   Lippo    Lippi  "   quoted,   686, 

693.  697,  706 

44Frankeleyn'sTale,The,"quoted,24 
41  Frost  at  Midnight  "  quoted,  431 
Frothingham,  O.  B.,  quoted,  637,  834 
44  Fu'  Sweet  that  Day  "  quoted,  242 
Furness,  W.  H.,  quoted,  816 

44  GARDENER'S     Daughter,     The," 

quoted,  772 

Gay,  Epitaph  on,  quoted,  174 
"  Geraint  and  Enid  "  quoted,  784 
41  Giaour,  The,"  quoted,  388,  410 
Gilder,  R.  W.,  quoted,  740,  743,  822 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  quoted,  787,  789 
44  Glance   Behind   the   Curtain,   A," 

quoted,  589 
44 Gleam   of  Sunshine,   A,"  quoted, 

638,  639 

44  God's  Acre  "  quoted,  655 
Godwin,  W.,  quoted,  31 
Godwin,    P.,  quoted,  338,  343,  351, 

353,  356,  36li  365<  37i,  55i,  552, 556, 

559,  S^i,  563.  564,  566,  570,  572 
Goethe  quoted,  391,  407 
41  Good-Bye  "  quoted,  517 
44  Good  Counsoil"  quoted,  24 
Gosse,  E.,  quoted,  144.  148,  150,  159, 

171,  179,  1 88,  204,  303,  340,  365 
'4  Grace  "  quoted,  505 
"Granville,  Mr.,  Epistle  to,"  quoted, 

153 
44 Grecian  Urn,  Ode  to  a,"   quoted 

304,  309 

Green,  J.  R.,  quoted,  34 
44  Green  Linnet,  The,"  quoted,  490, 
44  Green  River  "  quoted,  552,  569, 
Greene,  J.  R. ,  quoted,  269 
Grimm  quoted,  523 
Griswold,  R.  W.,  quoted,  741 
"  Guinevere,"  quoted,  794 


852 


INDEX 


HALE,  E.  E.,  quoted,  818,  834 
Halleck,  F.  G.,  quoted,  220,  235 
"  Harvard  Alumni,  To  the,"  826 
"  Hastings,  On  the  Death  of  Lord," 

quoted,  157 
Haweis,   H.   R.,  quoted,  20,  22,  29, 

585,  588,  590,  604,  608,  654 
Hawthorne,  J.,  quoted,  504,  513 
Hazlitt,  Wm.,  quoted,  7,  9,   14,  19, 

23.  27,  32,  46,  64,  8 1,  86,  loo,  104, 

107,  no,  112,  120,  121,  139,  142. 177, 

195,   196,  200,  220,  224,  248,  250,  260, 

268,  394,  399,  408,  420,  423,  426,  429, 
435,  444,  447,  473,  482,  485,  488,  490, 

41  Heaven  and  Earth  "  quoted,  402 
44  Heavenly    Love,  An  Hymne   of," 

quoted,  69 

"  Hebe  "  quoted,  614 
44  Hellas  "  quoted,  344,  367,  368 
Henley,  W.  E.,  quoted,  777 
44  Hiawatha"  quoted,  646 
Higginson,  T.  W.,  quoted,  510,  516, 

727,  737,  750,  752 
44  Hind  and  Panther,  The,"  quoted, 

44  Hive  at  Gettysburg,  The,"  quoted 
752 

Holmes,  adaptability  of,  839 ;  badi- 
nage, his  graceful,  822 ;  bibliogra- 
phy of  criticism  on,  814-815  ;  bio- 
graphical outline  of,  805-814  ; 
buoyancy  of,  815  ;  characteristics 
of,  805-845  ;  colloquial  habit  of, 
817  ;  conservatism  of,  838  ;  conviv- 
iality of,  842 ;  dazzling  wit  of,  824 ; 
earnestness  of,  834  ;  epigram  of, 
830 ;  exuberant  wit  of,  824 ;  fa- 
miliarity of,  817  ;  fanciful  humor 
of,  826  ;  fancy,  his  sportive,  830 ; 
graceful  badinage  of,  822  ;  honesty 
of,  832  ;  humor,  his  fanciful,  826  ; 
localism  of,  836 ;  manliness  of,  832 ; 
occasionalism  of,  839  ;  optimism  of, 
815  ;  paradox,  his  whimsical,  830  ; 
particular  characteristics  of,  815- 
845  ;  pathos  of,  828  ;  piquant  satire 
of,  822  ;  point  of,  830  ;  portraiture, 
his  power  of,  843  ;  purpose,  his  se- 
rious, 834 ;  quaintness  of,  838 ; 
quoted  as  critic,  12,  223,  234,  302, 
505,  512,  518,  522,  525,  528,  569, 592, 
592,  645,  647,  647,  655,  730,  733, 
834  ;  satire,  his  piquant,  822  ;  sec- 
tionalism of,  836 ;  self-revelation 
of,  817  ;  serious  purpose  of,  834  ; 
simple  treatment  of  weighty 
themes  by,  820 ;  sincerity  of,  832  ; 
sportive  fancy  of,  830;  weighty 
themes,  his  treatment  of,  820 ; 


whimsical  paradox  of,  830 ;  wit,  his 

exuberant,  824  ;  unconventionally 

of,  820  ;  youthfulness  of,  815 
44  Holy  Fair,  The,"  quoted,  238 
"  Holy  Willie's  Prayer  "  quoted,  239, 
"  Hope  "  quoted,  279 
Home,  R.  H.,  quoted,  470,  477,  688, 

696,  769,  776 
"  How  the  Old  Horse  Won  the  Bet  " 

quoted,  830 
Howells,   W.  D.,  quoted,   819,  820, 

828,  840 
"  How  it  Strikes  a  Contemporary  " 

quoted,  686 
Howitt,   W.,   quoted,   31,  281,  326, 

399,  407,  408,  776,  787,  799 
Hudson,  H.  N.,  quoted,  463,  477 
"  Human  Frailty  "  quoted,  283 
Hume  quoted,  76,  101 
Hunt,  L.,  quoted,  49,  59,  64,  77,  86, 

302,  305,  307,  311,  324,  352,  354 
41  Hurricane,  The,"  quoted,  560 
Hutton,    R.    H.,   quoted,   339,   342, 

345.  347.  350.  358,  363,  37Q,  462, 

466,  475,  477,  482,  488,  678,  683, 

686,  691,  694,  702,  767,  770,  776, 

786,  791,  792,  796,  799 
44  Hymn  of  the  City  "  quoted,  571 
41  Hymn  to  Death  "  quoted,  562 
Hymn  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's 

Nativity  "  quoted,  103,  105,  123 
"  Hymn  to  my  Fire  "  quoted,  586 
"  Hyperion  "  quoted,  311,  316 

ILIAD,   Pope's   translation,  quoted, 

"  //  Penseroso  "  quoted,  105,  121 
44  Imitations    of    Horace "    quoted, 

199 

44  Immortality,  Ode  on,"  quoted,  479 
41  Impromptu  "  quoted,  476 
"  Indian     Summer     Reverie,    An," 

quoted,  594 

"  Indian  Summer,  Our,"  quoted,  841 
"  Initial  Love,  The,"  quoted,  520 
41  In  Memoriam  "  quoted,  772,  772, 

788,  790,  791,  801 
44  In  the  Evil  Days"  quoted,  738 
41  Iron  Gate,  The,"  quoted,  829 
Irving,  W.,   quoted,  555,  561,  564, 

41 1   Stood    Tiptoe    Upon    a    Little 

Hill  "  quoted,  307,  316 
"It   Is  not  Always  May"   quoted, 

632 

JAMES,  H.,  quoted,  506,  526,  587, 
604,  6n,  695,  698,  702,  709 

Jeffrey,  F.,  quoted,  181,  222,  237, 
240,  247,  250,  259,  275,  286,  305, 


INDEX 


308,  314,  317,  386,  389,  398,  401, 

404,  407,  485,  486 

u  John  Gilpin's  Ride  "  quoted,  274 
Johnson,  Samuel,  quoted,   101,  109, 

112,  115,   118,   119,   122,    126,    138, 

143,    158,  159,  171,   186,   189,    196, 

202 

Johnson,  O. ,  quoted,  739 
"Jolly  Beggars,  The,"  quoted,  249 
Jonson,  B.,  quoted,  78 
"  J.  W.,  To,"  quoted,  507 

KEATS,  bibliography  of  criticism 
on,  298-300  ;  biographical  outline 
of,  289-298 ;  beauty,  his  love  of, 
300;  characteristics  of,  300-327; 
deep  pathos  of,  312  ;  delicate  fancy 
of,  305  ;  exuberant  imagery  of,  307  ; 
fancy,  his  delicate,  305 ;  felicity, 
his,  in  expression,  325  ;  imagery, 
his  exuberant,  307  ;  imagination, 
his  sympathetic,  305 ;  invention, 
his  mythological,  314 ;  love  of 
beauty,  his,  300;  magnificence 
of,  310 ;  melody  of,  325 ;  mysti- 
cism ot,  317  ;  mythological  inven- 
tion of,  314 ;  particular  character- 
istics of,  300-327  ;  pathos,  his  deep, 
312  ;  quoted  as  critic,  312  ;  sensi- 
tiveness of,  319 ;  sensuousness  of, 
319 ;  splendor  of,  310 ;  sympa- 
thetic imagination  of,  305  ;  vague- 
ness of,  317 

Keble,  J.,  quoted,  68 

Kennedy.  W.  S.,  quoted,  510,  726, 
732,  739,  743,  745,  75°,  75*,  8*9, 
820,  822,  825,  826,  828,  836,  838, 
840,  842,  844 

44  Kilchurn  Castle,  Address  to," 
quoted,  496 

"  Killigrew.  Ode  to  Mrs.  Anne," 
quoted,  162 

Kingsland,  W.  G.,  quoted,  696,  698 

Kingsley,  Chas.,  quoted,  200,  221, 
222,  249,  351,  365,  370^404,  770, 797 

"  Knightes  Tales,  The,"  quoted,  10, 

15,   21,   26,  30 

"  Know  Thyself"  quoted,  437 

"  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci  "  quot- 
ed, 318 

1  Lady  Byron,  To,"  quoted,  388 
4  Lady  of  Shalott,  The,"  quoted,  798 
'  Lady,  To  a,"  quoted,  486 
^amb,  C.,  quoted,  44,447 
'  Lancelot  and  Elaine  "  quoted,  803 
1  Lamia"  quoted,  316 
L  nndor,  W.  S.,  quoted,  405 
Lang,  Andrew,  quoted,  175,  219,  227, 
248,  339,  631,  645,  680,  684 


Lathrop,  G.  P.,  quoted,  824 

44  Last  Leaf.  The,"  quoted,  827 

"  Legend  of  St.  Mark,  The,"  quoted, 

747 

44  Lewti "  quoted,  428 
"  Liberty,  Ode  to,"  quoted,  366 
"  Liberty,  Sonnets  to,"  quoted,  479 
44  Life  "  quoted,  511 
44  Light  c5f  Stars,  The,"  quoted,  646 
44  Light  Woman,  A,"  quoted,  692 
44Lincluden    Abbey,    Verses    on," 

quoted,  251 

"  Lines  to  a  Critic  "  quoted,  367 
"  Living  Lost,  The,"  quoted,  566,  573 
Lockhart,  J.  G.,  quoted,  229,  235 
44  Locksley  Hall  "  quoted,  780 
Lodge,  H.  C.,  quoted,  840 
Longfellow,  artistic  fidelity  of,  630  ; 
assimilation  of,  642 ;  beauty,  his 
perception  of,  632  ;  bibliography 
of  criticism  on,  629-630 ;  biograph- 
ical outline  of,  616-628  ;  bookish- 
ness  of,  640 ;  characteristics  of, 
630-657  ;  commonplace  of,  644  ; 
didacticism  of,  644  ;  erudition  of, 
640 ;  finish  of,  630  ;  flexibility  of, 
646  ;  grace  of,  636  ;  humanity  of, 
634 ;  imagery,  his  labored,  650 ; 
imitation  of,  642  ;  labored  imagery 
of,  650  ;  lyric  power  of,  646  ;  mild- 
ness of,  636  ;  mild  religious  ear- 
nestness of,  653  ;  naturalness  of, 
655  ;  occasional  vigor  of,  651  ; 
quoted  as  critic,  233,  240,  245,  740 ; 
narrative  power  of,  649  ;  optimism 
°f«  653  ;  perception  of  beauty  by, 
632  ;  profuse  imagery  of,  650  ;  re- 
ligious earnestness,  his  mild,  653  ; 
repose  of,  638 ;  revery  of,  638 ; 
sentiment  ot,  636 ;  simplicity  of, 
655  ;  stock  morality  of,  644  ;  sym- 
pathy of,  634  ;  tenderness  of,  634  , 
trust  of,  653  ;  variety  of,  646 ;  vigor, 
his  occasional,  651 

"Longfellow,    To,"    quoted,    845; 
"  Lost  Leader,  The,"  quoted,  681, 

703 
Lounsbury,  T.  R.,  7,  9,  24,  139,  146, 

I5° 

44  Love  and  Duty  "  quoted,  802 
44  Love's  Philosophy  "  quoted,  371 
Low,  Sidney,  quoted,  590,  604,  612 
Lowell,  allusiveness  of,  582  ;  appre- 
ciation of  nature  by,  591  ;  bibliog- 
raphy  of   criticism    on,    581-582  , 
brilliancy    of,    596;     biographical 
outline  of,  £74-580  ;  characteristics 
of,  582-615  ;  classical  finish  of,  613  ; 
culture  of,  582  ;  deep  religious  in- 
stinct of,  604  ;  didacticism  of,  589; 


854 


INDEX 


erudition  of,  582  ;  faith  in  human 
nature  of,  608  ;  finish,  his  classical, 
613  ;  human  nature,  his  knowledge 
of,  608  ;  humorous  satire  of,  596  ; 
idyllic  power  of,  606 ;  independ- 
ence of,  587  ;  knowledge  of  human 
nature  of,  608  ;  manliness  of,  587  ; 
melody  of,  613 ;  nationalism  of, 
610  ;  nature,  his  appreciation  of, 
591 ;  particular  characteristics  of, 
582-615  ;  portraiture,  his  skill  in, 
594  ;  pathos  of,  60 1 ;  quoted  as 
critic,  5,  8,  n,  14,  18,  22,  25,  27,  31, 
37,  44,  52,  57,  62,  67,  73,  80,  85, 

102,  103,  109,  III,  117,  124,  138,  141, 

145,  I5i,  154,  158,  159,  161.  170, 
173,  178,  183,  186,  206,  300,  305, 

308,  310,   320,  325,   426,  428,  433, 
450,  462,   472,  474,    477,  480,  484, 
505,   523.   528,  550,    587,  589,  630, 
634,   651,   705,  708,    730,  739,  741, 
746,   750,  777,  821,  823,  824,  826  ; 
religious  instinct,   his  deep,  604  ; 
satire,  humorous,  of,  596  ;  section- 
alism  of,  610  ;   sincerity  of,   587  ; 
skill  in  portraiture  of,  594  ;  wit  of, 
598 

"  Luria  ''  quoted,  711 

MABIE,    H.  W.,  quoted,   303,  306, 

309.  323.  325,  681,  683 
Macaulay   quoted,  75,  102,  103,  123, 

139,  145,   148,  154.    155.  158,  161, 

229,  259,  354,  387,  389,  393,  404, 
470 

MacDonald,    G.,    quoted,  348,  352, 

359 

"  MacFlecknoe  "  quoted,  143 
*'  Maidenhood  "  quoted,  632 
"  Manfred  "  quoted,  401 
"  Mantle    of  St.    John    De    Matha, 

The,"  quoted,  747 

"  Marchantes Tale,  The,"  quoted,  17 
"  Mare  Rubrum  "  quoted,  843 
"  Margaret  "  quoted,  768 
"  Margaret,     The     Affliction     of,' 

quoted,  492 

"  Mariana  "  quoted,  798 
Martineau,  J.,  quoted,  443 
"  Mary,  To,"  quoted,  277 
"  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  Lament  of," 

quoted,  492 
"  Masque  of  Anarchy,  The, "quoted, 

358 
Masson,  D.,  quoted,  103,   112,  122, 

124,    138,  144,  307,  309,  314,   326, 

339.  354.  368,  470,  473-  482,  490 
"  Maternal  Grief  "  quoted,  467,  491 
Mathews,  B.,  quoted,  656 
"  Maud,"  quoted,  778,  780,  792 


"  May  Queen,  The,"  quoted,  147 
Mazzini  quoted,  391,  394,  400 
"Medical   Dinner,    At   a,"   quoted, 

839 

'  Medal,  The,"  quoted,  143,  149 
1  Melancholy,  Ode  on,"  quoted,  310 
1  Men  of  England,  To  the,"  quoted, 

1  Merlin  and  Vivian  "  quoted,  798 
1  Merlin  "  quoted,  523,  529 
'  Mesmerism  "  quoted,  689 
1  Messiah,  The,"  quoted,  182 
Mill,  J.  S.,  quoted,  438,  448 
Milton,  adaptation  of  sound  to  sense 
by,  121 ;  amplitude  of,  108  ;  bibliog- 
raphy of  criticism  on,  96,  98  ;  bio- 
graphical outline  of,  89,  95  ;  char- 
acteristics of,  99,  130  ;  concord  of. 
103  ;  contradiction  of,  126  ;  dignity 
of,  123  ;    egoism  of,  in  ;   equanim- 
ity of,   123  ;  harmony  of,  103  ;  in- 
congruity of,  126  ;  inspiration,  con- 
scious, of,  in  ;  intellectuality  of, 
119;  learning,  profound,   of,   119; 
love  of  natural   beauty   by,    105  ; 
majesty  of,  99  ;  moral  elevation  of, 
113  ;  quoted  as  critic,  44,  106,  113, 
114,    119,    479 ;   unnaturalness   of, 
126  ;  picturesqueness  of,  105  ;  pro- 
found  learning  of,  119  ;  purity  of, 
113  ;  serene  dignity  of,   123  ;  sub- 
limity of,  99  ;  vastness  of,  108 
Minto,  W.,  quoted,  7,  n,  16,  18,  25, 

33,  36,  49.  55.  59.  76 
Mitford,  J.,  quoted,  148,  154,  161 
Mitford,    M.    R.,  quoted,   303,   746, 

838 

"  Modest  Request,  A,"  quoted,  830 
"  Monadnoc  "  quoted,  526 
"  Monke's  Tale,  The,"  quoted,  14 
Montague,  Lady  Mary  W.,  quoted, 

188 

Moore,  Thos.,  quoted,  394,  398 
"  Monturi  Salutamus"  quoted,  641 
Morse,  J.  S.,  quoted,  816,  819,  825, 

835.  836,  838 

11  Moral  Essays  "  quoted,  174,  198 
"  Moral  Warfare,  The,"  quoted,  740 
Morley,  H.,  quoted,  13,  16,  34,  59 
Morley,  J.,    quoted,   402,   409,   508, 

519,  527,  680,  700,  702 
"  Mother's  Picture,  On  the  Receipt 

of  My,"  quoted,  276 
"  Muipotmos  "  quoted,  65 
"  Music  "  quoted,  347 
"  My  Lost  Duchess  "  quoted,  685 
"  My  Aunt  "  quoted,  823 

"NAMELESS    Grave,  A.,"  quoted, 
635 


INDEX 


855 


"  Namesake,  My,"  quoted,  735,  736 
"  Nature  "  (Emerson)  quoted,  517 
"  Nature  "  (Longfellow)  quoted,  637 
"  New   England  Society,  To   the," 

quoted,  837 
"  Newfoundland   Dog,    Epitaph  on 

a,"  quoted,  392 
"  Nightingale,  Ode  to  a  "  (Keats), 

quoted,  313 
"Nightingale,   To   the"    (Cowper), 

quoted,  288 
Noel,  R. ,  quoted,  712 
"  Nonne      Preestes      Tale,     The," 

quoted,  8,  13,  30 
Norton,  C.  E.,  quoted,  506,  512,  518, 

521,  584,  593.  597 
"  Nutting  "  quoted,  483 
"  Nux  Postcoentia  "  quoted,  843 


"  ODB  for  the  Fourth  of  July,  An," 
quoted.  613 

u  Ode  on  Solitude,"  Pope's,  quoted, 
172 

44  Oenone  "  quoted,  778 

"  Oh  Mother  of  a  Mighty  Race  " 
quoted,  568 

44  Old  Cambridge  "  quoted,  837 

Oldham,  Lines  to,  by  JJryden,  quot- 
ed, 140 

"  Old  South  Church,  An  Appeal 
for,"  quoted,  839 

Oliphant,  Mrs.,  quoted,  262 

"On  a  Dream  "  quoted,  317 

41  Once  More  "  quoted,  842 

"  On  Lending  a  Punch  Bowl "  quot- 
ed, 833,  839,  842,  843 

"  On    Scaring    Some    Water-fowl  " 

S noted,  225 
n  Seeing  a  Wounded  Hare  Limp 
By  "  quoted,  225 
"  On  the  Sea  "  quoted,  311 
li  On  the  Young  Statesman  "  quoted, 

"  Open  Window,  The,"  quoted,  637 

Orr,  Mrs.  S.,  quoted,  706 

Ossoli,    Margaret   F.,    quoted,   343, 

346,  351,  362 

'  Our  Banker  "  quoted,  817 
"  Our  Country  "  quoted,  745 
"  Our  State  "  quoted,  744 


"  PACCHIAROTTO  "  quoted,  705 
Palgrave,  F. ,  quoted,  9 
Pancoast,  H.  S.,  quoted,  15,  20 
"  Paradise  Lost  "  quoted,  102,   102, 
105,    108,    108,  no,  no,  in,  113, 
113, 113, 117,  118,  118,  121, 121,  122, 
125,  129,  130,  130 


11  Park,  The,"  quoted,  505,  522 

Parkman,  F.,  quoted,  741 

44  Parlement  of  Foules,  The,"  quot- 
ed, 21,  30 

44  Parson  Turell's  Legacy  "  quoted, 
837 

44  Passing  of  Arthur,  The,"  quoted, 

"  Pastoral  Letter,  The,"  quoted,  732 
Paten,  W.,  424,  428,  430,  433,  437, 

462,  465,  475,  480.  490,  493 
Pattison,  Mark,  quoted,  99,  107,  115, 
120,  171, 173, 174,  181,  183, 185,  197, 
200,  206 

11  Peter  Bell  "  quoted,  488 
44  Peter  Bell  the  Third  "  quoted,  349 
41  Pet  Lamb,  The,"  quoted,  464 
Phelps,  E.  S.,  quoted,  733,  737,  752 
"  Playmate,  My,"  quoted,  753 
Poe,  E.  A.,  quoted,  568,  631, 640,  643, 

645.  778 

44  Poetry  "  quoted,  821 
Pope,  artificiality  of,  177  ;  balance  of, 
173  ;  bibliography  of  criticism  on, 
168-170  ;  biographical  outline  of, 
163-168  ;  brilliance  of,  196  ;  coarse- 
ness of,  184  ;  conciseness  of,  170 , 
contempt  of,  for  womanhood,  205  ; 
conventional  morality  of,  199  ;  crit- 
icism, his  skill  in,  198  ;  delicate 
skill  of,  in  criticism,  198  ;  elegance 
of,  196  ;  epigram  of,  173  ;  erudi- 
tion of,  202  ;  exactness  of,  170 ; 
faith,  his  religious,  199  ;  fragmen- 
tariness  of,  203  ;  gracefulness  of, 
196 ;  individuality  of,  183  ;  insin- 
cerity of,  189  ;  learning,  his  wide, 

202  ;  logical  sequence,  his  lack  of, 

203  ;  malignity  of,  184  ;  meanness 
of,  184  ;  melody  of,  174  ;  morality, 
his  conventional,    199 ;    point  of, 
173  ;  portraiture  of,  183  ;  quoted  as 
critic,   145,  170 ;  religious  faith  of, 
199  ;  sequence,  his  lack  of  logical, 
203  ;    skill   of,   in    criticism,    198  ; 
terseness  of,  170  ;  vanity  of,  189  ; 
vivid    portraiture    of,    183 ;    wide 
learning  of,  202  ;  womanhood,  his 
contempt  for,  205 

"Prairies,  The,"  quoted,  568 

'4  Praise  of  Women,  A,"  quoted,  17 

41  Pregnant  Comment,  The,"  quoted, 

586 
41  Prelude,  The,"  quoted,  468,  471, 

471,  474,  493 
44  Present  Crisis,  The,"  quoted,  589, 

591 

4  Princess,  The,"  quoted,  788 
44  Problem,  The,"  quoted,  509 
Procter,  B.  W.,  quoted,  450 


856 


INDEX 


44  Progress  of  Error,  The,"  quoted, 

270 
"  Prologue    to    Canterbury    Tales" 

quoted,  8,  14,  35,  36,  36 
44  Prometheus    Unbound  "    quoted, 

369 

4  Prometheus  "  (Lowell)  quoted,  610 
44  Prospice  "  quoted,  681 
44  Prothalamion  "  quoted,  65 
Prothero,  R.  E. ,  quoted,  831 
44  Psyche,  Ode  to,"  quoted,  307 
41  Punishment    of     Death,    Sonnets 

on,"  quoted,  494 

Quarterly  Review  quoted,  278 
"Queen    Mab "   quoted,   344,   349, 
352,  363>  364 

"  RABBI  BEN  EZRA  "  quoted,  696, 

699.  703,  707 
44  Rape  of  the  Lock,  The,"  quoted, 

176,  182,  207 

"  Rainbow,  The,"  quoted,  474 
41  Reaper  and  the   Flowers,    The," 

quoted,  635 
44  Reaper,    The   Solitary,"    quoted, 

476 

44  Redbreast,  The,"  quoted,  485 
44  Reeve's  Tale,  The,"  quoted,  26 
44  Religio  Laid  "  quoted,  140,  155 
"  Religious  Musings"  quoted,  430, 

446 
44  Reminiscences "    (Keats)   quoted, 

44  Residence  at  Cambridge  "  quoted, 

464 

41  Resignation  "  quoted,  655 
44  Retired   Cat,  The,"  quoted,  287, 
41  Retirement  "  quoted,  261,  284 
"  Reverie  "  quoted,  614 
44  Revisited  "  quoted,  750 
"  Revolt    of    Islam,    The,"  quoted, 

360,  371 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  quoted,  312,  505, 

506,  508,  510,  513,  515,  518,  520, 

524,  528,  550,  557,  559,  565,  571, 

584,  612,  635,  726,  734,  737,  743, 

752,  818 
"  Ring  and  the  Book,  The,"  quoted, 

682 
"  Rip  Van  Winkle,  M.D.,"  quoted, 

^25,  833 

41  River  Path,  The,"  quoted,  754 
4'  Rivulet,"  quoted,  565 
41  Rizpah  "  quoted,  780,  794 
Robertson,  E.  S. ,  quoted,  637 
Robertson,  J.  C. ,  quoted,  12,  21 
Robertson,  j    M.,  quoted,  793 
•'  Rose  and  Fern,  The,"  quoted,  822 


Rosetti,  D,  G  ,  quoted,  312 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  quoted,  7,  12,  67, 
81,  101,  104,  122, 141,  146,  151,  159, 
181,  230,  245,  268,  275,  301,  306, 
308,  323,  340,  343,  366,  396,  426, 
439,  466,  473 

1  Ruienesof  Time,  The,"  quoted,  87 
1  Rural  Architecture  "  quoted,  487 

4  SAADI  "  quoted,  524 

'  Sabbath  Scene,  A,"  quoted,  732 

1  Sacrifice  "  quoted,  507 

4  Saga  of  King  Olaf,  The,"  quoted, 

649 

Saintsbury,  G. ,  quoted,  50,  64,  63, 
80,  85,  139,  141,  145,  147,  150,  153, 
158,  681,  767,  770,  774 
Sanborn,  F.  B.,  quoted,  512,  519 
44  Satires,"  Prologue  to  Pope's,  quot- 
ed, 101,  195 

4i Satires,"  Pope's,  quoted,  195 
41  Saul  "  quoted,  699 
Savage,  W,  H.,  quoted,  506 
Scherer,  E.,  quoted,  99,  103,  112,  116, 
119,   124,  126,  387,  394,  463,  467, 

47L477,  480,485,  493,  775 
44  Scotch  Drink  "  quoted,  249 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,   quoted,    10,  44, 
141,   143,   148,   150,    152,    154,    154, 
158,   161,   237,  243,   386,   394,  400, 
405,  407 
Scudder,  H.   E.,  quoted,  631,    638, 

640,  642,  650,  652,  836 
44  Sea  Dream,  A,"  quoted,  753 
"  Sensitive     Plant,     The,"    quoted, 

355.  360 

Shairp,  J.  C.,  quoted,  19,  119,  219, 
223,  225,  229,  231,  239,  243,  247, 
342,  346,  348,  359,  364,  369,  426, 
435,  437,  448,  462,  466,  469,  477, 
482,  488,  490 

Shelley,  acute  sensibility  of,  350 ; 
awelessness  of,  347  ;  biographical 
outline  of,  328-335  ;  bibliography 
of  criticism  on,  335-338  ;  character- 
istics of,  338-371 ;  curiosity  of, 
347  ;  desire,  his  intellectual,  3^5_; 
faith  in  humanity,  hjs,  368 ;  fear- 
lessness of,  361  ;  high  ideals  of, 
361 ;  horrible,  the.  his  taste  for, 
358  ;  idealism  of,  338  ;  imagina- 
tive power,  his  rare,  353  ;  impul- 
siveness of,  369  ;  independence  of, 
364 ;  intellectual  desire  of,  345 ; 
intensity  of,  356 ;  irreverences, 
347  ;  lawlessness  of,  364  ;  liberty, 
his  love  of,  364 ;  love  of  liberty, 
his,  364 ;  lyrical  rapture  of,  342  ; 
mysticism  of,  338;  optimism  of, 
368 ;  particular  characteristics  of, 


INDEX 


857 


338-371 1  quoted  as  critic,  311, 
35 1 1  445  I  rapture,  his  lyrical,  342  ; 
rare  imaginative  power  of,  353; 
sensibility,  his  acute,  350  ;  sensual- 
ism of,  369 ;  sincerity  of,  361  ; 
subtlety  of,  338  ;  sympathy  of,  350  ; 
taste  for  the  horrible,  his,  358  ; 
thirst  of,  345  ;  yearning  of,  345 
"  Shepheard's  Calendar,  The,"  quot- 
ed, 50,  56,  60,  81 

"  Shoemakers,  The,"  quoted,  738 
"  Shrubbery,  The,"  quoted,  264 
"  Siege  of  Corinth,  The,"  quoted, 

408 

41  Simon  Lee  "  quoted,  487 
44  Simplon,  The,"  quoted,  483 
44  Sir  Fopling  Flutter  "  quoted,  149 
Skeat,  W.,  quoted,  22 
44  Skeleton  in  Armor,  The,"  quoted, 

653 

44  Sketch,  A,"  quoted,  396 

44  Skinner,  Milton  to  Cyriack,"  quot- 
ed, 125 

44  Skylark,  To  a  "  (Shelley),  quoted, 
344,  347 

"Skylark,  To  a  "(Wordsworth), 
quoted,  489 

"  Sleep,  To,"  quoted,  476 

"  Sludge  the  Medium,"  quoted,  710 

Smith,  A.,  quoted,  25,  29 

Smith,  Goldwin,  quoted,  256,  267, 
271,  273,  277,  282 

Smith,  G.  B.,  quoted,  368,  588,  594, 
602,  604,  608,  685,  698,  709 

"  Snow-Bound  "  quoted,  648,  728 

44  Snow  Storm,  The,"  quoted,  522 

44  Song  "  (Bryant)  quoted,  569 

Song  (Lowell)  quoted,  615 

Sonnet  (Keats)  quoted,  313,  324 

Sonnet  (Shelley)    quoted,  364 

Sonnets  (Wordsworth)  quoted,  467 

44  Sordello,"  quoted,  690 

Southey  quoted,  447 

4'  Spanish  Student,  The,"  quoted, 
632,  651 

Spedding,  J.  R.,  quoted,  803 

Spenser,  adulation  by,  82  ;  artificial- 
ity of,  51 ;  beauty,  his  perception 
of,  61  ;  bibliography  of  criticism 
on,  43-44  ;  biographical  outline  of, 
38-43  ;  characteristics  of,  44-88  ; 
diffuseness  of,  73  ;  exquisite  melo- 
dy of,  57  ;  flattery  by,  82  ;  idealism 
of,  44;  imagination,  his  rich,  44; 
incongruity  of,  51 ;  license,  his  ver- 
bal, 78  ;  melody,  his  exquisite,  57  ; 
moral  elevation  of,  66  ;  particular 
characteristics  of,  44-88 ;  percep- 
tion of  beauty  by,  61 ;  pictorial 
power  of,  85 ;  reverence  of,  for 


womanhood,  70  ;  rich  imagination 
of,  44  ;  sensitiveness  of,  61  ;  verbal 
license  of,  78  ;  womanhood,  his  rev- 
erence for,  70 

"  Sphinx,  The,"  quoted,  514,  529 
"  Spirit  of  Poetry,  The,"  quoted,  634 
Spoftbrd,    H.   P.,   quoted,  727,  731, 

735.739.744,748,750 
"  Spring  "  quoted,  832 
"  Squiere's  Tale,  The,"  quoted,  27 
"St.  Agnes,  The  Eve  of,"  quoted, 

"  Stanzas  on  Freedom  "  quoted,  589 

"  Stanzas  on  the  Prospect  of  Death  " 
quoted,  250 

Stead,  W.  T.,  quoted,  608,  787 

Ste.  Beuve,  quoted,  171,  196,  198, 
257,  259,  260,  262,  265,  271,  280 

"  St.  Cecilia's  Day,"  Dryden's  Song 
for,  quoted,  146 

"  St.  Cecilia's  Day,"  Pope's  ode  on, 
quoted,  176 

Stedman,  E.  C.,  quoted,  401,  420, 
426,  434,  441, 504,  508,  509, 512, 514, 
515, 518,  520,  521,  524,  550,  563, 583, 
59°>  591.  594.  59°\  602,  606,  610,  613, 
631,  632,  634,  636,  638,  640,  642,  644, 
647,  649,  650,  656,  680,  683,  687,  691, 
702,  708,  726,  731,  734,  737,  739,  740, 
742,746,  748,  751,  766,  769,  773,  779, 
791,  792,  799,  815,  818,  820,  822,  825, 
828,  830,  831,  836,  838,  840,  842,  843 

Stephen,  Leslie,  quoted,  171,  180, 
183,  186,  191,  196,  200,  205,  260, 
265,  268,  271,  273,  277,  339,  423, 
437,  445,  465,  470,  477,  480,  482, 

815 
Stevenson,  R.  L. ,  quoted,  226,  233, 

240,  243 

Stillman,  W.  J.,  quoted,  601 
Stirling,  J.,  quoted,  780,  796,  801 
Stoddard,  R.  H.,  quoted,  26,  35,  304, 

312,  315,  557.  561,  563,    565,   570, 

572,  597,  649,  654,  727,   731,   739, 

744,  748,  777,  793 
44  Strange  Lady,  The,"  quoted,  558 
4k  Submission  "  quoted,  283 
Suggestions  to  Teachers,  11-14 
44  Summer,  A,"  quoted,  732 
44  Summer  Wind,  The,"  quoted,  558 
44  Summons,  The,"  quoted,  751 
4 'Sun  and  Shadow  "  quoted,  833 
44  Sun-Day  Hymn,  A,"  quoted,  835 
44  Sunset,  The,"  quoted,  342 
"  Sursum  Corda,"  quoted,  508 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  quoted,  237,  303, 

312,  323,  325,  340,  342,   359,   385, 

400,  420,  422,  425,  430,   432,    439, 

443,  450,  465,  473,  475,  48o>  483. 
490,  768,  780,  782. 


858 


INDEX 


Symonds,   J.   A.,   quoted,  104,  343, 

346,  349,  357,  363,  365,   39i.  396, 

401,  405,  473,  485,  682,    688,  690, 
694,  697,  700,  704,  708,   712 

"  TACT  "  quoted,  520 

Taine  quoted,  9,  19,  24,  33,  47,  52, 
64,  70,  75,  81,  85,  101,  105,  109, 
114,  117,  120,  124,  127,  137,  145, 
148,  150,  152,  158,  161,  170,  173, 
I75>  J79>  l83,  l88,  189,  220,  223. 
237,  243,  248,  257,  275,  340,  351, 
386,  391,  393>  398,  400,  405,  467, 
475,  477,  487,  493,  494,  7^7,  77«, 
779,  783,  784 

"  Tale  of  the  Man  of  Lawe,  The," 
quoted,  10,  15,  17 

"  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn  "  quoted, 
641,  650 

Talfourd,  T.   N.,  quoted,  420,   449, 

467,  470,  481,  490 
'  Tarn  O'Shanter  "  quoted,  228 

"  Tarbolton  Lasses  "  quoted,  228, 
244 

"Task,  The,"  quoted,  257,  258,  258, 
260,  266.  266,  267,  270,  271,  272, 
283,  285;  287 

Taylor,  B.,  quoted,  551,  553,  559, 
569,  636,  734,  742,  745,  777,  783, 
788,  832,  840 

"  Teares  of  the  Muses,  The,"  quot- 
ed, 69 
1  Telling  the  Bees  "  quoted,  728 

"  Tell's  Birthplace  "  quoted,  443 

Tennyson,  bibliography  of  criticism 
on,  764-766 ;  biblical  flavor  of, 
789  ;  biographical  outline  of,  755- 
763  ;  commonplace,  his  ornamen- 
tation of,  781  ;  diction,  biblical,  of, 
789  ;  dramatic  power  of,  792  ;  ele- 
vation, moral,  of,  784 ;  exquisite 
finish  of,  773  ;  finish,  his  exquisite, 
773  ;  ideal  portraiture  of,  766  ;  mi- 
croscopic observation  of,  794 ; 
moral  elevation  of,  784  ;  nature,  his 
peculiar  attitude  toward,  794  ;  ob- 
servation, his  microscopic,  794  ; 
occasional  passion  of,  779  ;  opti- 
mism of,  784 ;  ornamentation  of 
the  commonplace  by,  780  ;  ornate- 
ness  of,  781  ;  particular  character- 
istics of,  766-804  ;  passion  of,  oc- 
casional, 779  ;  pathos  of,  803 ; 
peacefulness  of,  799  ;  peculiar  atti- 
tude of,  toward  nature,  794 ;  pict- 
uresqueness  of,  768  ;  portraiture, 
his  ideal,  766  ;  regret,  infinite,  of, 
790 ;  repose  of,  799 ;  tenderness 
of,  803  ;  vehemence  of,  779  ;  yearn- 
ing of,  790 


"Thanatopsis  "  quoted,  560,  644 
"Three  Friends  of  Mine"  quoted, 

651 
"  Thy  Will  Be  Done  "  quoted,  736, 

741 

Times,  London,  quoted,  585 
"Tintern  Abbey,  Lines  on  Revisit- 
ing," quoted,  483 
"  Tirocinium  "  quoted,  270,  279 
"  To  a  Louse  on  a  Lady's  Bonnet  " 

quoted,  244 

"To  an  Insect  "  quoted,  824 
"To  a  Virtuous  Young  Lady  "  quot- 

ed,  116 
"To  Constantia   Singing"  quoted, 

371 

"  To  Hope  "  quoted,  313 
"To-morrow"      (Shelley)     quoted, 

347 

"  To  the  Lord  Chancellor  "  quoted, 
35.8 

Traill,  H.  D. ,  quoted,  420,  441,  597, 
771 

"Trust  "  quoted,  736 

Tuckerman,  H.  T.,  quoted,  175,  181, 
197,  220,  234,  237,  259,  271,  273, 
277,  286,  307,  325,  340,  348,  355, 
356,  359,  363,  365,  435,  44i,  487, 
551,  559,  561,  567,  569,  570,  572, 
771,  775,  783,  797,  799 

"Twa  Dogs,  The,"  quoted,  236 

"Twa  Herds,  The,"  quoted,  239 

"Twilight,"  quoted,  656 

"Two  Voices,  The,"  quoted,  802 

"  UNDER  the  Violets  "  quoted,  829 

"  Under  the  Willows  "  quoted,  607, 
607 

Underwood,  F.  H.,  quoted,  510,  516, 
585,  588,  590,  593,  595,  599,  602, 
604,  606,  633.  646,  651,  654,  727, 
73°,  734,  736-  747,  818,  820,  823, 
828,  830,  835,  836,  838,  840,  842 

"  Unhappy  Lot,  The,  of  Mr.  Knott," 
quoted,  600 

"  Universal  Prayer,  The,"  quoted, 

201 

"  Up  at  a  Villa"  quoted,  707 
"  Urania  "  quoted,  821,  830,  844 
"  Uriel  '  quoted,  514 

"  VALEDICTION  "  quoted,  261 

Van  Dyke,  H.,  quoted,  103,  106,  no, 

114,  31:*,  323,  776,  785,  789,  794 
"Village  Blacksmith,  The,"  quoted, 

646,  657 

"  Virgil's  Gnat  "  quoted,  87 
44  Vision  of  Judgment,  A,"  quoted, 

"Voiceless,  The,"  quoted,  829 


INDEX 


859 


foice    of   the   Loyal   North,    A,' 

quoted,  836 

"  Voices  of  the  Night  "  quoted,  643 
"Voluntaries  "  quoted,  507 

"WALK  at  Sunset,  A,"  quoted,  555, 

564 

"  Waltz,  The,"  quoted,  406 
Ward,  T.   H.,  quoted,  9,   13,  15,  17, 

27,  257,  262,  264,  268 
Warton,  T.,  quoted,  28 
"  Waterfowl,  To  A,"  quoted,  573 
"  Weariness  "  quoted,  635 
Wendell,  B.,  quoted,  727,  734,  752 
44  Westminster  Abbey,  For  one  who 
would  not  be  Buried  in,"  quoted, 
196 
41  West  Wind,  Ode  to  the,"  (Shelley) 

quoted,  369 
"  What  I  Have  Come  For  "  quoted, 

817 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  quoted,  46,  59,  62, 
67,  70,  73,  79,  82,  85,  301,  306,  317, 
321,  350,  354,  356,  361,  386,  389, 
392,  395,  397,  402,  407,  409,  422, 
426,  429,  435,  461,  465,  468,  473, 
475,  477,  482,  484,  486,  488,  490, 
493,  494,  5°3,  506,  507,  511,  512, 
516,  523,  526,  549,  552,  555,  559, 
560,  562,  567,  630,  633,  638,  640, 
644,  646,  649,  651,  654,  694,  727, 
729.  733-  746,  770,  778,  796,  816, 
820,  823,  824,  826,  831,  833 
White,  R.  G.,  quoted,  680,  685,  708 
Whitman,  W.,  quoted,  219,  635 
Whittier,  artlessness  of,  752 ;  ballad- 
making,  his  genius  for,  745  ;  bibli- 
cal imagery  of,  751  ;  bibliography 
of  criticism  on,  724-725  ;  bio- 
graphical outline  of,  714-724  ;  con- 
secration of,  739 ;  dexterous  use 
of  proper  names  by,  750;  faith  of, 
732 ;  fervor,  his  religious,  732 ; 
genius  of,  for  ballad-making,  745  ; 
homely  beauty  of,  725  ;  humani- 
tarianism  of,  736  ;  idyllic  flavor  of, 
725  ;  imagery,  his  biblical,  751  ; 
inspiration  of,  739 ;  lyrical  power 
of,  745  ;  moral  energy  of,  729 ; 
nationalism  of,  741 ;  piety  of,  732  ; 
power  of  characterization  of,  747 ; 
particular  characteristics  of,  725- 
754;  proper  names,  his  dexterous 
use  of,  750 ;  quoted  as  critic,  234 
556,  655,  815,  820,  824,  828,  828, 
834  ;  religious  fervor  of,  732  ;  sec- 
tionalism of,  741  ;  simplicity  of, 
752  ;  sympathy  of,  736 
Wilson,  J.  G.,  quoted,  235,  559,  743, 
746 


Wilson,  M.,  quoted,  706 
Wilson,    Professor,    quoted,    71,  83, 
224,    230,   243,  245,   449,  470,  475, 
564.  767 

Winchester,  C.  T.,  quoted,  605 
"  Window,  The,"  quoted,  778 
41  Windsor  Forest  "  quoted,  182 
"Winter"  (Burns),  quoted,  250 
Winter,  W.,  quoted,  655,  831,  840 
11  Witch's  Daughter,   The,"  quoted, 

728 

Woodbury,  G.  E. ,  quoted,  260,  273, 
275,  282,  285,  303,  323,  366,  436, 
608,  612,  614,  726,  731,  734,  742, 
746,  748,  751,  752,  836,  838,  840, 
844 
11  Woodnotes  "  quoted,  512,  521, 

526 

Wordsworth,  appreciative  sympathy 
of,  468  ;  bibliography  of  criticism 
on,  459,  461  ;  biographical  outlines 
of,  452,  458 ;  characteristics,  his 
particular,  461,  496 ;  contemplation 
of,  465  ;  delicate  sense  of  sound, 
his,  474  ;  didacticism  of,  493  ;  dul- 
ness  of,  480 ;  early  puerility  of, 
480  ;  elevation,  his  moral,  476  ;  ex- 
aggeration his,  of  the  trivial,  486  ; 
freshness  of,  488 ;  grandeur  of, 
494  ;  heaviness  of,  480  ;  imagina- 
tive power  of,  481  ;  love  of  nature, 
his.  468  ;  meditation,  his  profound, 
465  ;  moral  elevation  of,  476  ;  nat- 
ure, his  love  of,  468  ;  originality 
of,  488  ;  particular  characteristics 
of,  461-496  ;  pathos  of,  490  ;  pro- 
found meditation  of,  465  ;  puerility, 
his  early,  486 ;  quoted  as  critic, 
115,  221,  449,  773  ;  self-esteem  of, 
472  ;  self-reflection  of,  472  ;  sense 
of  sound,  his  delicate,  474  ;  seren- 
ity of,  494  ;  severe  simplicity  of, 
461  ;  simplicity,  his  severe,  461  ; 
stateliness  of,  494  ;  sympathy,  his 
appreciative,  468 ;  sympathy,  his, 
with  humanity,  483 
"World's  Convention,"  Whittier  to, 


orld-Soul,    T.he,"    quoted,   514, 


quoted,  75 1 

"Written     with     a    Pencil,"     etc., 
quoted,  241 

14  YELLOW  VIOLET,  The,"   quoted, 

554 
"  Young  Lady,  To  a,"  quoted,  439, 

442 

"  Young  Friend,  To  a,"  quoted,  429 
"  Youth    and    Age  "    quoted,    446, 

712 


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